Dear Mr Robinson,

I confirm receipt of your information request and that we are dealing with this and will respond to you in due course.

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 and Environmental Information Regulations 2004 allow up to 20 working days for responding to information requests.

If you are not content with the handling of your request, you have the right to ask for an internal review. Requests for internal reviews should be addressed to the Monitoring Officer, PO Box 1720, Huddersfield, HD1 9EL. Alternatively, you can send an email to: [email address].

Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.

If you are not content with the outcome of any review you have the right under section 50 of the 2000 Act to apply to the Information Commissioner for a decision as to whether your request for information has been dealt with in accordance with the requirements of the Act. The Information Commissioner’s website is at www.ico.org.uk and gives more information about the role and duties of the Commissioner. The ICO telephone helpline on 0303 123 1113 or 01625 545745 is available between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday.

Regards

Information Governance Team
Kirklees Council
Governance Service
PO Box 1720
HUDDERSFIELD
HD1 9EL

For more information about how we deal with your personal data, please see the Kirklees Council privacy notice

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Robinson,

I am writing in response to your request dated 10/03/2023. This has been
dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

You asked for the following information:

Please can you provide me with the following information under the Freedom
Of Information Act :-

- addresses of all Registered Residential HMO properties that are within
your councils area; and

- the maximum number of occupants that each property referred to in (a) is
licensed to hold

- the last actual registered number of occupants that each property
referred to in (a) holds

- the date each of the properties in (a) was first registered as HMO

- the names of the owners/licence holders of those properties referred to
in (a)

- the mandatory HMO report first licensed – Please see the below
clarification request below, once this is received we can provide this
information.

The Council’s response to your specific questions is set out below:

Please see attached Kirklees licenced register of HMOs.

The Council can confirm that it does hold information falling within the
scope of your request but believes that it would exceed the appropriate
time limit for complying with the request in order to provide it.

Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows a public
authority to refuse a request if the cost of providing the information to
the applicant would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ as defined by the
Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees)
Regulations 2004:

12 Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit

(1) Section 1(1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a
request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of
complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.

(2) Subsection (1) does not exempt the public authority from its
obligation to comply with paragraph (a) of section 1(1) unless the
estimated cost of complying with that paragraph alone would exceed the
appropriate limit.

The Regulations provide that the appropriate limit to be applied to
requests received by local authorities is £450 (equivalent to 2.5 days (or
18 hours) of work).  In estimating the cost of complying with a request
for information, an authority can only take into account any reasonable
costs incurred in:

(a) determining whether it holds the information,
(b) locating the information, or a document which may contain the
information,
(c) retrieving the information, or a document which may contain the
information, and
(d) extracting the information from a document containing it.

For the purposes of the estimate the costs of performing these activities
should be estimated at a rate of £25 per hour.

We do not keep records of actual numbers in the HMO, this would be a very
large logistical exercise. We could only say when each property was first
registered by looking at each individual record of the HMO, this would
take ten minutes for each individual record, and there are 258 mandatory
licenced HMOs. Therefore it would take approximately 43 hours to retrieve
and exact this information which would far exceed the appropriate limit of
£450. 

The request for disclosure of the information is therefore refused under
section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. 

Although excess cost removes the Council’s obligations under the Freedom
of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill, I have supplied information
relative to your request, retrieved or available before it was realised
that the fees limit would be exceeded. I trust this is helpful, but it
does not affect our legal right to rely on the fee’s regulations for the
remainder of your request.

Please can we ask the applicant for clarification on what is meant by ‘the
mandatory HMO report first licensed’?

If you are not content with the handling of your request, you have the
right to ask for an internal review.  Requests for internal reviews should
be submitted within 2 months of the date of receipt of the response to
your original request and should be addressed to the Monitoring Officer,
PO Box 1720, Huddersfield, HD1 9EL, you can also send an email to:
[1][email address]. 

Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future
communications.

If you are not content with the outcome of any review you have the right
under section 50 of the 2000 Act to apply to the Information Commissioner
for a decision as to whether your request for information has been dealt
with in accordance with the requirements of the Act.  The Information
Commissioner’s website is at [2]www.ico.org.uk and gives more information
about the role and duties of the Commissioner.  The ICO telephone helpline
on 0303 123 1113 or 01625 545745 is available between 9am and 5pm, Monday
to Friday.

Yours sincerely

Information Governance Team

Kirklees Council
Governance Service

PO Box 1720
HUDDERSFIELD
HD1 9EL

For more information about how we deal with your personal data, please see
the [3]Kirklees Council privacy notice

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