Dear Aneurin,  

 

Thank you for your email dated 9 April 2019; we have treated this as a Freedom of Information request – you have asked for the following information:

 

My request relates to the practice of housing households who are deemed homeless or threatened with homelessness in private rented sector accommodation. For each question please give data for each of the following financial years: 2010/11, 2011/12, 2012/13, 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18 and 2018/19.

 

  • How many households who approached Barnet Council as homeless or threatened with homelessness were housed in private rented accommodation? Please give the data for each of the financial years listed above and include data for households housed through the prevention duty and the full homeless duty.
  • Of all the households who were deemed as homeless or threatened with homeless and Barnet Council accepted a duty towards, what percentage were housed in private rented sector accommodation? Please give the data for each of the financial years listed above and include data for households housed through the prevention duty and the full homeless duty.

 

 

The numbers of homeless applicants housed into the private rented sector is as follows:

 

2011/12 – 121

2012/13 – 175

2013/14 – 328

2014/15 – 393

2015/16 – 492

2016/17 – 646

2017/18 – 649

2018/18 – 683

 

Refusal Notice

s12 (cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit)

 

Barnet Homes ability to report on whether these cases were housed as prevention or under the full homeless duty would require a manual exercise, cross referencing an access database holding lettings figures, with a housing management system and then reviewing case notes held within them to establish the duties owed when they were rehoused. It would take approximately 7 minutes to review each case and enter the results on a spreadsheet – this equates to over 400 hours to go through, so compliance with your request would exceed the appropriate time/costs limit under section 12 of the Freedom of information Act 2000. This is currently 18 hours /£450. Section 12 (1) of the FOIA does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the time or cost would be exceeded.

Your rights

If you are unhappy with the way your request for information has been handled, you can request a review by emailing Talk2Us@barnethomes.org and marking it as an appeal for the attention of the Data Controller.

If you remain dissatisfied with the handling of your request or complaint, you have a right to appeal to the Information Commissioner at: The Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF (telephone: 08456 30 60 60 or 01625 54 57 45; website: www.ico.gov.uk).

There is no charge for making an appeal.

Kind regards

 

Carly Williamson                         

Complaints and Information Manager