Council Spend on Office Space and Internet

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

Dear Birmingham City Council,

I wish to request the total amount of money Birmingham City Council organisations have spent each year on rented office space and Internet connectivity (such as broadband), between the years of 2010-2014.

Yours faithfully,

Kat Kynes

Vicky Taylor, Birmingham City Council

1 Attachment

[1]BCClogorgb8_11

 

Our Ref:              FOI11700/BPS/vat

 

29 October 2014

 

Kat Kynes

By email only to: Kat Kynes [2][FOI #235785 email]

                 

 

 

Dear Ms Kynes

 

Freedom of Information Act 2000 – Request for information

 

Thank you for your recent enquiry for information held by the Council
under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

 

Question

 

I wish to request the total amount of money Birmingham City Council
organisations have spent each year on rented office space and Internet
connectivity (such as broadband), between the years of 2010-2014.

 

We acknowledge receipt of your request dated 27 October 2014 which was
received in our office on 28 October 2014 and we will be in touch with you
again in due course.

 

In some circumstances a fee may be payable and if that is the case, we
will let you know.  A fees notice will be issued to you, and you will be
required to pay before we will proceed to deal with your request.

 

If you require any further information or are not happy with our response
please do not hesitate to contact me on 0121 464 4421, quoting the
reference number above in any future communications.

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

 

 

Vicky Ann Taylor

Professional Support Officer

Birmingham Property Services

 

 

Data Protection Act 1998

The information you have provided within your Freedom of Information
request will be held on our database and may also be held within manual
records for a period of 2 years from the date Birmingham City Council
received your request.  Any personal data that you provide to Birmingham
City Council will be held in line with the requirements set out within the
Data Protection Act 1998.

Re Use of Public Sector Information

Where Birmingham City Council is the copyright holder of any information
that may be released, re-use for personal, educational or non-commercial
purposes is permitted without further reference to the City Council. 
Where the re-use is for other purposes, such as commercial re-use, the
applicant should notify the City Council in writing to seek approval or
agree terms for re-use.

 

 

Birmingham Property Services

Corporate Resources Directorate         
                                                             Telephone:
0121 464 4421  

PO Box
16255                                                                                                            
Fax: 0121 303 3947

10 Woodcock
Street                                                                     
Email: [email address]

Birmingham  B7
4BL                                                                            
[3]http://property.birmingham.gov.uk/

 

 

show quoted sections

References

Visible links
2. mailto:[FOI #235785 email]
3. http://property.birmingham.gov.uk/

Vicky Taylor, Birmingham City Council

Dear K Kynes

 

We are due to provide our response shortly for your request:

 

“I wish to request the total amount of money Birmingham City Council
organisations have spent each year on rented office space and Internet
connectivity (such as broadband), between the years of 2010-2014.”

 

Can we please just clarify what you mean by Birmingham City Council (BCC)
organisations?  Do you simply mean BCC or do you mean BCC and companies
wholly owned by BCC or do you mean just companies wholly owned by BCC?  We
want to provide you with the correct information so can you please clarify
your request.

 

 

Regards

show quoted sections

Dear Vicky,

Thanks for coming back to me.

I do mean BCC and companies wholly owned by BCC.

Yours sincerely,

Kat Kynes

Dear Vicky Taylor,

I do mean BCC and companies wholly owned by BCC.

Yours sincerely,

Kat Kynes

Vicky Taylor, Birmingham City Council

Dear Kat Kynes

I am in receipt of your clarification but am having trouble getting this response by the due date due to staff leave. I will endeavour to get this response to you in the next few days.

Regards
______________________________________________________________________
Name:  Vicky Ann Taylor
Job Title:  Professional Support Officer
PP|  0121 464 4421 (office) |  0121 303 3947 (fax)
Email:  [email address]
postal address:  Birmingham Property Services, Birmingham City Council, PO Box 16255, Birmingham, B2 2WT
internal address:  Birmingham Property Services, Zone 18, Level 3, 10 Woodcock Street
sat-nav address:  10 Woodcock Street, Birmingham, B7 4BL
http://www.birminghampropertyservices.co...
 
Workdays: Mon – Thurs

show quoted sections

Vicky Taylor, Birmingham City Council

1 Attachment

[1]BCClogorgb8_11

 

 

Our Ref:              FOI11700/BPS/NG/vat

 

15 December 2014

 

Kat Kynes

By email only to: Kat Kynes [2][FOI #235785 email]

 

 

 

Dear Ms Kynes

 

Your Request for Information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000

 

We refer to your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the
Act”) in which you requested the following information:

 

“I wish to request the total amount of money Birmingham City Council
organisations have spent each year on rented office space and Internet
connectivity (such as broadband), between the years of 2010-2014.”

 

The council asked you to clarify what you mean by the phrase “Birmingham
City Council organisations” so that we could be clear about what
information you were seeking. You provided the following clarification:

 

“I do mean BCC and companies wholly owned by BCC.”

 

When the Council receives a request for information, it endeavours to be
transparent however there are occasions where it is not possible to
provide the requested information, or it is covered by an exemption under
the Act.

 

Response

 

The Council has broken down your request into two parts:

 

1.    Information relating to total amount spent on rented office space
2010-2014;

2.    Information relating to total amount spent on internet connectivity

 

Information relating to total amount spent on rented office space
2010-2014

 

With regard to the expenditure relating to rented office space, we are
able to provide the total expenditure for the Council’s main CAB (Central
Administrative Building) estate.  This information is recorded on a
financial year basis. The figures are as follows:

 

·         2010/11 – Total £4,272,738.13

·         2011/12 – Total £2,544,419.27

·         2012/13 – Total £1,439,756.58

·         2013/14 – Total £685,163.99

 

The reason for the reduction in expenditure is because as part of the
Working for the Future programme (during this timeframe) the number of CAB
offices has been reduced from 78 buildings down to a target of 7
buildings. 

 

Information relating to costs for other rented office space (i.e. non CAB)
is not readily available. That information is held within the Council’s
three Directorates (Economy, People and Place) under several different
Service teams.  Obtaining all the expenditure information for these office
buildings between the years 2010-2014 will require working with the
relevant Directorate Finance teams to retrieve the required information. 
If the information is not available, we will need to extract the
expenditure detail from each of the leases and files that the Council held
between 2010-2014.   

 

A search has been undertaken to try and determine the costs for non CAB
offices. This information has been retrieved but the Council does not
consider that this is a complete and accurate picture of the actual total
costs. It does, however, provide you with the information that we have so
far been able to locate, but please bear in mind that these figures are
not likely to be 100 percent accurate.  The information is as follows:

 

·         2010/11 – £8,321,402.70

·         2011/12 – £5,855,172.39

·         2012/13 – £5,362,100.81

·         2013/14 – £5,573,131.52

 

Under section 13 the Act, a public authority is entitled to charge a fee
for the provision of information where it would exceed the Appropriate
Limit to comply with a request. The Appropriate Limit is defined in the
Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees)
Regulations 2004 (“the Fees Regulations”). In the case of Local
Authorities, including the Council, the Appropriate Limit is £450 at a
rate of £25 per hour, which equates to 18 hours.

 

Regulation 4(3) of the Fees Regulations sets out the activities which can
be considered when determining whether the cost would exceed the
Appropriate Limit. They are the costs that the public authority reasonably
expects to incur 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.

 

With regard to your request, the Council has already spent 15 hours in
complying. An explanation regarding how this time has been incurred is set
out below.

 

On receipt of the FOI request, the Landlord and Tenant Team liaised with
Head of Corporate Landlord and Head of Asset Management to determine how
best we could retrieve this information.  Contact was then made with the
Finance department to see what information was held by them.  Finance
interrogated their system to see what relevant information could be
produced by them.  A report was issued which needed to be amended to
produce the appropriate information for the requester. This process took
approximately 5 hours.

 

Following that, a number of Council officers worked on the matter to
verify the information that had been produced and also to see whether they
could obtain data relating to the non-CAB offices.  Officers looked into
the database relating to leaseholds to extract the expenditure data
relating to the non-CAB office leases during 2013/14.  This produced some
findings which are set out above. However, as explained above, the non-CAB
figures that have been retrieved do not all appear to have been retrieved
correctly (i.e. rent, rates and service charges) following the
interrogation of the system.  This process took approximately 10 hours.

 

Given the apparent inaccuracies with the non-CAB information, a sampling
exercise was carried out to determine how long it would be likely to take
to successfully retrieve the full non-CAB expenditure lease information.
This sampling exercise for 3 files took 1 hour.

 

The current time spent in determining whether the requested information is
held, locating, retrieving and extracting it is 16 hours.

 

In order to successfully retrieve the full non-CAB expenditure lease
information, it is anticipated that this is likely to take a minimum of 7
hours.  This will involve going directly to the individual leases and
extracting the rental information also identifying how long the leases
since the requester specifically asked for 2010-2014 data.  An officer
would also need to check the main property files (most of which are held
offsite) and the Electronic Valuation Forms to find out what service
charge was applied, and  also the Valuation Office website to determine
what the rates payable would have been. 

 

This information does not include the costs paid by companies wholly-owned
by Birmingham City Council.  This is because there are no wholly- owned
companies within the Council’s leasehold estate.  Therefore, it is likely
that to comply with the request for BCC information would take at least 23
hours, which is 5 hours more than the Appropriate Limit. If you would like
us to undertake this exercise, we will require payment of £25 per hour for
the 5 hours i.e. £125. The hourly rate is the rate that the Council is
permitted to charge under the Fees Regulations.  Please note that it may
take longer than the estimate to comply with the rest of the request, but
if that is likely to be the case, we will communicate this to you.

 

If you do wish to pay for the request please forward a cheque or postal
order in pounds sterling made payable to ‘Birmingham City Council’. Once
the fee has been paid a copy of the information will be dispatched to you
as soon as possible.

 

The Council will be unable to continue processing your request until the
fee is paid. If you wish the Council to continue to deal with your request
you should pay the fee requested within 3 calendar months (by 15 March
2015). If the Council does not receive payment of the fee by this date, I
shall take it that your do not wish to pursue the request further and will
consider the request closed.

 

If you narrow the scope of your request, the Council may be able to
provide the information free of charge because it would cost less than the
appropriate limit to do so. For instance if you request for only rental
information (therefore excluding business rates and service charge
expenditure).  Any reformulated request the department receives from you
will be treated as a fresh FOI request.

 

Information relating to total amount spent on internet connectivity

 

The Council’s ICT services are provided by Service Birmingham, who won the
contract in 2006 to supply these services. The Council pays a fixed charge
for a complete service and therefore we do not hold information about the
total amount spent on internet connectivity.

 

Right of Appeal

 

If you are unhappy with the handling or the outcome of this request, you
are entitled to make a request for an internal review/appeal, such view to
be undertaken by Council officers not involved in the handling of your
request.

 

If you wish to take advantage of the internal appeal/review process, this
can be done by contacting:

 

Birmingham City Council

Corporate Information Governance Team

Performance and Information Division

PO Box 16366

Birmingham

B2 2YY

 

Telephone: 0121 303 4876

Fax: 0121 675 1427

Email: [3][email address]

 

If subsequently you are not satisfied with the Council’s decision
following the review you may apply to the Information Commissioner for a
decision.  Generally, the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have
exhausted the complaints procedure provided by the Council.  The
Information Commissioner can be contacted at the following address:

 

The Information Commissioner

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

 

Telephone: 01625 545745

Web Address: [4]www.ico.org.uk

 

Should you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact me.

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

 

 

 

Vicky Ann Taylor

Professional Support Officer

Birmingham Property Services

 

 

 

 

 

Birmingham Property Services

Corporate Resources Directorate         
                                                             Telephone:
0121 464 4421  

PO Box
16255                                                                                                            
Fax: 0121 303 3947

10 Woodcock
Street                                                                     
Email: [email address]

Birmingham  B7
4BL                                                                            
[5]http://property.birmingham.gov.uk/

 

 

show quoted sections

References

Visible links
2. mailto:[FOI #235785 email]
3. mailto:[email address]
4. http://www.ico.org.uk/
5. http://property.birmingham.gov.uk/