Dark kitchens (also known as ghost kitchens, cloud kitchens, or delivery-only restaurants)
Case reference FOI2024/01250
Received 22 July 2024
Published 1 August 2024
Request
I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Please provide the following information regarding dark kitchens (also known as ghost kitchens, cloud kitchens, or delivery-only restaurants) in your jurisdiction:
1. The total number of registered dark kitchens operating in your area for each year from 2019 to present, broken down by year.
2. The number of reported cases of food-borne illnesses linked to dark kitchens for each year from 2019 to present.
3. The number of enforcement notices issued to dark kitchens for each year from 2019 to present.
4. Details of these enforcement notices, including:
a) The nature of the violations
b) The dates of issuance
c) The outcomes of these notices (e.g., resolved, ongoing, closures)
Response
I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Please provide the following information regarding dark kitchens (also known as ghost kitchens, cloud kitchens, or delivery-only restaurants) in your jurisdiction:
1. The total number of registered dark kitchens operating in your area for each year from 2019 to present, broken down by year.
2. The number of reported cases of food-borne illnesses linked to dark kitchens for each year from 2019 to present.
3. The number of enforcement notices issued to dark kitchens for each year from 2019 to present.
4. Details of these enforcement notices, including:
a) The nature of the violations
b) The dates of issuance
c) The outcomes of these notices (e.g., resolved, ongoing, closures)
A) The information for questions 1 and 2 is not held in a form that would enable it to be located, retrieved and extracted within the Appropriate Time Limit which equates to 18 hours as defined by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limits and Fees) Regulations 2004.
Our electronic reporting systems are unable to run a report for this information. To ascertain the data requested, officers would need to manually check individual files for this information. An initial search has shown that 2,555 files would need to be checked for this information, and it is estimated that it would take 5 minutes to check each file. Once the details had been identified this would need to be noted and once all files had been checked in this way, the total figures requested could be calculated.
This would at a conservative estimate take at least 213 hours to complete. Where the Limit is exceeded Public Authorities are not obliged to supply the information requested by virtue of S12 of the Act. Please take this letter as a refusal notice under S17 of the Act.
However, within the 18 hour limit, we can provide answers for questions 3 and 4 as requested. Please advise us if this is something you require.
Documents
This is Herefordshire Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
You can browse our other responses or make a new FOI request.