Disused / vacant buildings
Case reference FOI2025/01017
Received 28 May 2025
Published 11 June 2025
Request
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like to request the following information relating to disused or vacant buildings within your council’s jurisdiction:
Q1. The number of disused or vacant buildings currently recorded in your area, broken down by type if possible (e.g., residential, commercial, industrial, public sector).
Q2. Of these, how many are considered suitable or have previously been identified for potential redevelopment or repurposing? If possible, please specify what types of use these buildings could be repurposed into (e.g., residential housing, office space, community centres, retail, etc.).
Q3. If available, please provide the postcode-level data for the disused or vacant buildings identified in your records.
Q4. Any records or reports outlining the council’s strategy, plans, or discussions regarding the redevelopment of vacant or disused buildings within the last 24 months. Please provide the data in an electronic format such as Excel or CSV if possible.
Response
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like to request the following information relating to disused or vacant buildings within your council’s jurisdiction: Q1. The number of disused or vacant buildings currently recorded in your area, broken down by type if possible (e.g., residential, commercial, industrial, public sector).
Q2. Of these, how many are considered suitable or have previously been identified for potential redevelopment or repurposing? If possible, please specify what types of use these buildings could be repurposed into (e.g., residential housing, office space, community centres, retail, etc.).
Q3. If available, please provide the postcode-level data for the disused or vacant buildings identified in your records.
Q4. Any records or reports outlining the council’s strategy, plans, or discussions regarding the redevelopment of vacant or disused buildings within the last 24 months. Please provide the data in an electronic format such as Excel or CSV if possible.
Answer: The information for question 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 1,845 files would need to be checked for this information, and it is estimated that it would take 6 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 184 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 1, 3 and 4 as requested, however please be advised other exemptions may be applicable. 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.