Social housing and Right-to-Buy sales Data Request - a Freedom of Information request to Powys County Council

Thank you for your request for information which was received by the Authority on the 07/02/2023 This is to inform you that your request has been considered and the Authority can provide the following response: Request I hereby submit a Freedom of Information request. I would like access to more detailed data, i.e. at a finer geographical level, on social housing stock and Right-to-Buy sales in the Council area for the period 1980-2021. Ideally, the data would follow the following format: Variable of interests: Properties sold under Right-to-Buy and Social/Council housing stock Geographical unit: As granular as possible (e.g. full postcode or full address) Time unit: As granular as possible (e.g. Date) Period covered: As large as possible between 1980 and the present time. Area Covered: As large as possible (e.g. all properties managed by the Council at any point in time) Additional information, if possible: discount applied, property valuation, actual sale price, number of bedrooms, or other characteristics. To provide the requested information on the discount applied, property valuation and sale price, officers would be required to manually examine the individual records for the 549 properties identified. We are therefore not obliged to provide a response to your request, as the time required for officers to locate, retrieve and extract the data from information held would exceed the appropriate limit and as such Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 is engaged. Whilst it is standard practice when relying on Section 12 of the Act to exempt the whole request, to be of assistance we have provided the remaining information requested. Please see the attached Excel document '2023-0167F - Response - Redacted' for the data covering the period 1998 to 2021. Please note that the house numbers and the second half of the postcodes have been removed as we consider this information to be the personal data of the private owners of these properties. Therefore, this part of your request engages Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires Powys County Council, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which: (c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies. In this instance the relevant exemptions are Section 12 and Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act. Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 makes provision for public authorities to refuse requests for information where the cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate limit, as detailed in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate limit) Regulations 2004. The limit for public authorities is set at £450 which amounts to a maximum of 18 hours of search and retrieval time charged at £25.00 per person per hour. The Regulations set out what may be taken into account when public authorities are estimating whether the appropriate limit has been exceeded. The costs are limited to those that an authority reasonably expects to incur in: · determining whether it holds the information requested · locating the information or documents containing the information · retrieving such information or documents · extracting the information from the document containing it (including editing or reformatting information) Section 40 (2) Whilst held, this information would be considered personal information of the data subjects referenced who do not have a reasonable expectation that their names will be released to the public. Such a disclosure may breach Article 5 1(a) of The General Data Protection Regulations and Section 40(2) of The Freedom of Information Act would therefore be engaged. Section 40 of the FOI Act allows a public authority to withhold information from a response to a request under the FOIA when the information requested is personal data relating to someone other than the requestor. We believe that this request is now complete. Should any further information be required regarding this topic, a separate request will need to be submitted. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your interest in Powys County Council. If you are not satisfied with this response or wish to seek clarity, then you should contact us, we will try and deal with your query informally, in the first instance. If informal resolution is not possible or you are still dissatisfied, then you may apply for a formal internal review by contacting the Information Compliance Team at [2][email address]. Please note that any request for an internal review must be made within 40 working days of the date on which the attempt to reach informal resolution has come to an end. If you remain dissatisfied following an internal review, you may take your complaint to the Information Commissioner under the provisions of Section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act The supply of documents under Freedom of Information does not give the person or organisation who receives them an automatic right to re-use the documents in a way that would infringe copyright. You are free to use any information supplied for your own use, including for non-commercial research purposes. The information may also be used for the purposes of news reporting. However, any other type of re-use, for example, by publishing the information or issuing copies to the public will require the permission of the copyright owner. The copyright of most of the information that we provide in response to Freedom of Information Act requests will be owned by Powys County Council. The copyright in other information may be owned by another person or organisation, as indicated in the information itself. For HMSO Guidance Notes on a range of copyright issues, see the Office of Public Sector Information(OPSI) website: [4]http://www.opsi.gov.uk/advice/crown-copy... We keep your details safe in line with the requirements set out in the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulations. We will only ever use the details you share with us to enable us to undertake our statutory obligations. You can find out more by looking on our web site. [5]Information Compliance Privacy Notice - Powys County Council ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ Mae'r e bost hwn ac unrhyw atodiad iddo yn gyfrinachol ac fe'i bwriedir ar gyfer y sawl a enwir arno yn unig. Gall gynnwys gwybodaeth freintiedig. Os yw wedi eich cyrraedd trwy gamgymeriad ni ellwch ei gopio, ei ddosbarthu na'i ddangos i unrhyw un arall a dylech gysylltu gyda Cyngor Sir Powys ar unwaith. Mae unrhyw gynnwys nad yw'n ymwneud gyda busnes swyddogol Cyngor Sir Powys yn bersonol i'r awdur ac nid yw'n awdurdodedig gan y Cyngor. This e mail and any attachments are confidential and intended for the named recipient only. The content may contain privileged information. If it has reached you by mistake, you should not copy, distribute or show the content to anyone but should contact Powys County Council at once. Any content that is not pertinent to Powys County Council business is personal to the author, and is not necessarily the view of the Council.