FOI release

Statutory nuisance Complaints

This request was refused in full, so we didn't provide the information the requester asked for. This may include information where we can neither confirm nor deny that we hold it.

Case reference EIR2024/00492

Published 5 April 2024

Request

You previously sent us a spreadsheet which indicated that there were 5 statutory nuisance complaints relating to accumulations from agriculture and 57 complaints relating to odour from agricultural activities in total in 2021, 2022 and 2023 (enclosed with this letter). We would now like to request the details of these 62 complaints including information relating to any action that was taken by Herefordshire Council in response to these complaints. Please provide the information in electronic form.

Response

Please provide the information in electronic form.

Answer: The above request is refused under Regulation 12 (4) (b) of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 on the grounds that the request is manifestly unreasonable.

The request covers 62 complaints which officers would need to manually check. It will take over 30 minutes per enquiry to search, gather and report information requested. In addition to the work above being undertaken by the Environmental Health & Trading Standards team, work would also need to be undertaken to review and redact the information of personal data before it is released.

It is estimated that retrieving and extracting information from relevant files: 62 total complaints x 30 minutes per complaint file = 31 hours

Total cost of officer time @ £25 per hour = £775.

This exception is subject to a public interest test, and accordingly I have weighed up the public interest in disclosure against the public interest in not disclosing the information as follows:

The public interest in disclosure:

The Environmental Information Regulations specifically state that public authorities should apply a presumption in favour of disclosure when considering environmental information.

Release of environmental information promotes transparency and accountability, increases public awareness and understanding of environmental matters which in turn enables the general public to more effectively participate in decision making.

The public interest in non-disclosure:

Herefordshire is a small rural county. The current (2021 census) estimate of the population is 187,100. Two fifths of residents live in the most rural areas of the county. Herefordshire has the 4^th lowest overall population density in England (the 9^th lowest of all 'top tier' local authorities in England & Wales) at 85 people per square kilometer (or 0.85 per hectare; 220 per square mile). Likewise Herefordshire Council is comparatively small, with small numbers of officers in each team.

This includes the teams which would be involved in dealing with this request. Carrying out this request would pull resources from the below areas of work.

The environmental health, trading standards and licensing service are responsible for the following areas:

Air and water quality
Animal health
Community protection - dog fouling, littering, abandoned vehicles
Contaminated land and closed landfill sites
Child licensing and school absence
Environmental health commercial - food hygiene, health and safety, infectious disease
Environmental health housing
Environmental health protection - noise, odour and smoke nuisance
General licensing (including the sale of alcohol)
Gypsy and Travellers
Taxi licensing
Technical support - call centre, data collection and information processing
Trading standards.

The time that it would take to collate the information requested would affect their ability to effectively deliver the above services which would not be in the public interest.

The FOI team, which administers the FOI / EIR process for Herefordshire Council, consists of just 2.5 FTE officers. On average the council receives 100 information requests each month. Complying with a request of this nature would impact upon our ability to process other FOI / EIR requests, particularly within statutory timescales. Other officers within the wider Information Governance team would need to be diverted from their work to help administer these requests whilst work on this request took place, but that would negatively impact upon the wider team's ability to do other work such as subject access requests (which also have statutory timescales), investigation of data breaches and offering guidance on data protection matters, which can involve personal data held by the council regarding residents.

The amount of time that it would take to collate the information requested would divert resources and limit the council's ability to deliver other public services, disruption which would be detrimental to the wider public. We have considered whether we could deploy other means under the Regulations to provide you with this information, such as extending the statutory response timescales for a further 20 working days on the grounds of complexity and volume of information, or by issuing you with a charging notice. However, even if the timescales were extended or a charging notice issued, this request would still place a disproportionate burden on the council which would be manifestly unreasonable.

Taking the above into consideration, I have found the public interest in disclosure in this case is outweighed by the public interest in not disclosing the information.

If you wish to discuss ways in which your request could be reduced in scope to make it more manageable, such as just providing a brief description of the nature of each complaint, which would be manageable, please let us know.

Please note that, even if your request was reduced in scope to make it more manageable, the requested information could still be withheld if other exemptions apply e.g. for third party personal data.

Documents

There are no documents for this release.

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.