Response 1119406

Response to request for information

Reference

1119406

Response date

8 June 2023

Request

I would be most grateful if you could provide the following information in respect of approved rent levels where the property is run by providers of exempt accommodation (regardless of whether they are registered as providers of social housing with the RSH) covering the period of the last 3 financial years (i.e. 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22):

1. Please provide weekly Housing Benefit eligible rent levels paid for all supported accommodation in the Borough and clarify is these are supported but not exempt or supported exempt.
2. Please advise the threshold levels at which you consider supported accommodation to be unreasonably expensive, and therefore subject to restriction.
3. Please provide weekly Housing Benefit eligible rent levels paid for all supported accommodation in the Borough and clarify is these are supported but not exempt or supported exempt.
4. If possible, please could you show the total/gross weekly rent split between the core rent, eligible and ineligible service charges. Can you indicate whether the rents are for the year to March 23 or from April 23.

Response

However, I have to advise you that we will not be able to answer your request without exceeding the appropriate limit. This is because to extract the information requested would involve having to individually review every single expenditure line within our subsidy claims for each of the year’s requested.

Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act makes provision for public authorities to refuse requests for information where the cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate limit, which for local authorities is set at £450. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 2 working days in determining whether the authority holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting it. The appropriate limit is prescribed by regulation 3 of the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

The Council may be able to provide some information in the scope of your request if you reduce or refine your request to bring the cost of compliance under the limit. Please contact me if you would like to refine your request or require advice on doing so.

Please also note that the Council considers the information requested below to fall under the exemption in section 43(2) of the FOIA. The information requested is held by the Council. However, the Council is of the view the information is commercially sensitive and having considered whether it would be in the public interest to provide you with the information has concluded that disclosing the information requested would prejudice the Council’s commercial interests and distort genuine competition resulting in the inflation of rent. I am satisfied that in all the circumstances of this case the public interest in withholding the information outweighs the public interest in disclosing it in accordance with section 43(2) of the FOIA.

With regards to the threshold levels at which you consider supported accommodation to be unreasonably expensive, and therefore subject to restriction – each case is dealt with on an individual basis depending on the circumstances surrounding the accommodation and thus we do not have any such thresholds.