1. Under the Freedom of Information Act of 2000, could you please provide me with the most up-to-date list of all commercial (non-residential) property rates data for your local authority that currently hold a credit on their account, and include the following fields:
a) The address of the commercial property the credit has occurred on
b) The name of the ratepayer of the property referred to in (a) if they are NOT a sole trader or individual.
c) The amount by which the account is in credit
d) The rating year in which the credit arose
e) The reason for the credit
Could you also please also confirm the date that the data was generated from your system.
I appreciate that properties owned / rented by individuals are personal information and such personal data (i.e. the Firm's Trading Name) would be excluded from my request in terms of Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. In such cases, please provide the remaining information with the Firm's Trading Name either blank or listed as 'individual'.
The Council are currently reviewing the information that it publishes as part of its Business Rates datasets following decision notices published by the Information Commissioner and other Councils responses to Freedom of Information requests.

We are applying the following exemptions in relation to this request; Section 40 (personal details), Section 31(1)(a), Section 41(1) (information provided in confidence) and Section 21 (accessible by other means).

The information used for Business Rates is provided by the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) and the expectation of using that data is in relation to Business Rates and not disclosed. This information was provided to the Council with an expectation of confidence for the purposes of calculating rates or reliefs to arrive at an amount payable. We consider that the withheld information is more than trivial in nature and is not accessible to the public by other means. This exemption is not subject to the public interest test, but section 41(b) has an assumption that the public interest in maintaining the duty of confidence will prevail unless the public interest in disclosure outweighs maintaining that duty. Certain information can already be accessed by contacting the Valuation Office.

The main concern that is being raised around the country now relating to credit information is in relation to the increased risk of fraud that could occur. The provision of a list of empty properties would make it easier for criminals to identify targets for property crimes. Disclosure of credit balances, write offs, and write ons, also exposes both the Council and businesses to the risk of fraud. As a result, we consider that disclosure of this information would be likely to prejudice the prevention of crime.

The Council recognises the public interest in openness and transparency however, we consider this does not outweigh the stronger case against disclosure of these exemptions.