Request for Review on refusal to publish Complete Non-Residential / Business Property Rates Data

Response to this request is long overdue. By law, under all circumstances, Stafford Borough Council should have responded by now (details). You can complain by requesting an internal review.

Dear Stafford Borough Council,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Stafford Borough Council declaration that you refuse to publish non-domestic rates data, including occupation status, under a claim of Section 31(1)(a).

For avoidance of doubt, this is my quarterly request:

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In terms of the Freedom of Information Act of 2000, and subject to section 40(2) on personal data, could you please provide me with a complete and up-to-date list of all business (non-residential) property rates data for your local authority, and including the following fields:

- Billing Authority Property Reference Code (linking the property to the VOA database reference)
- Firm's Trading Name (i.e. property occupant)
- Full Property Address (Number, Street, Postal Code, Town)
- Occupied / Vacant
- Date of Occupation / Vacancy
- Actual annual rates charged (in Pounds)

If you are unable to provide an absolute “Occupation / Vacancy” status, please provide the Exemptions and / or Reliefs that a particular property may be receiving.

Please provide these data as machine-readable as either a CSV or Microsoft Excel file, capable of re-use, and under terms of the Open Government Licence (meaning reuse for any and all purposes, including commercial).
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You have been publishing these data quarterly since at least 2016. All of which are available on my website at https://sqwyre.com to anyone who wishes to search for it. Yet, without any review, you suddenly rely on a claim of terrorism applied to Westminster to refuse publication. And you do this without any attempt to request that I redact your information from my website or from WhatDoTheyKnow, all of which is public.

For the avoidance of doubt, here's the complete record: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/staf...

This means that you are hypocrites.

But you are worse than hypocrites. Right now - late-May 2020 - almost 400,000 people have died from a deadly disease we have no immunity or treatment for; almost 40,000 of them British. Hundreds of millions of people have lost their jobs as the world's economy has shut down. Millions of people in the UK - business owners, workers, researchers and civil servants - are attempting to figure out how we can get the economy working again.

And, in the midst of that desperate need for information on the real economy, you - Stafford Borough Council - express "concern" that empty properties are at risk to terrorism, vandalism and whatever other made-up evidence-free claims you can come up with to justify your baseless excuses not to publish information of critical importance to the welfare of society.

On my website, anyone searching for information on <> will now receive the following warning (e.g. https://sqwyre.com/startup/E07000197/off...

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This report has been produced under restrictions that amount to censorship. Stafford claim that their publication of the business transparency data we use to produce our research would cause crime. The UK Information Tribunal has ruled that authorities do not need to produce evidence of this claim when refusing to publish since "just because it is not mentioned does not mean that it is not a risk" [1, 2]. This permits Stafford to operate beyond scrutiny or criticism, and Sqwyre.com cannot offer a good-faith recommendation to invest here.

Why not place your trust in one of the more than 90% of other local authorities which do believe in transparency?
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You have made an evidence-free decision and it is clear that asking for a review is pointless. This "request" is not for you but for the thousands of people who rely on the work I do, and visit WhatDoTheyKnow to download the data I request.

This response will be public, to demonstrate that in a moment of great national crisis Stafford Borough Council displayed both cowardice and hypocrisy.

Anyone following this thread to find out more about Stafford Borough Council please know: your time and investment are best spent elsewhere.

Yours faithfully,

Gavin Chait

FOI, Stafford Borough Council

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Your request will be distributed to the relevant department and will
receive a reply within 20 working days in accordance with the Act.