FOI request (FOIR-177529913)

I am writing to make a freedom of information request relating to offers of accommodation to statutorily homeless (in accordance with the Housing Act 1996).

1) The destination of households who have secured alternative accommodation at the end of the prevention duty. 

 * By "prevention duty", I am referring to Section 195 of the 1996 Act – the ‘prevention duty’ – which places a duty on housing authorities to work with people who are threatened with homelessness within 56 days to help prevent them from becoming homelessness. 

 * By "destination," I am asking for the name of the borough the household secured accommodation in.

 * I have used the term "households", rather than "individuals," in line with how the government's terminology in its statistical output relating to out of borough placements (see https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-homelessness#statutory-homelessness-live-tables. Table TA1, column "In TA in another local authority district"

2) Location of interim accommodation offers for households who have been owed a relief duty

 * By "interim accommodation" I am referring to section 188 of the Housing Act 1996. (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/52/section/188)

 * By "relief duty" and I am referring to  Section 189B of the 1996 Act – which requires housing authorities to help people who are homeless to secure accommodation. 

3) Destination of households who have secured accommodation at the end of the relief duty

4) Location of temporary accommodation offers for households who have been owed a main duty

 * By "main duty," I am referring to section 193(2), namely the duty to secure accommodation for applicants who are homeless, eligible for assistance, have priority need and are not intentionally homeless.

5) Location of final offers for households who have been owed a main duty

6) The number of households from outside the borough (those owed a relief duty, a main duty and those at the end of prevention duty) who have secured alternative accommodation, interim accommodation or temporary accommodation in your borough. Please provide the name of the council that has secured these households accommodation.  

 * As you will know, there is a requirement on local authorities to notify the ‘receiving’ authority when they place a homeless household in temporary accommodation outside of the borough is a statutory duty under section 208(2) of the Housing Act 1996: "Where a housing authority places an applicant in accommodation outside the district under any part of the Act, section 208(2) requires them to notify the authority in whose district the accommodation is situated of the placement. The notification requirement applies to all out of district placements and not just those arranged under interim accommodation duties or the section 193(2) main housing duty." 
 

7) The number of households have declared themselves "intentionally homeless," as per section 191 of the Homeless Act 1996, after refusing offers of out of borough accommodation, be it interim, temporary or permanent accommodation (see http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/52/section/196/1996-09-30).

For all queries above, I would like these numbers for the past 10 years, broken down by year: 2008/09, 2009/10, 2010/11, 2011/12, 2012/13, 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18, 2018/19 and the latest figures you have for 2019/20 at the time of receipt of this request. 

Please find attached requested information.

NOTICE OF REFUSAL

Some of the information requested will require us to manually to check our records, this would far exceed the time limit set out by the Information Commissioner therefore under S12 of the Freedom of information Act 2000 provides an exemption from the obligation to comply with a request for information if the estimated costs of complying with that request would exceed the prescribed appropriate limit.

We estimate that the costs of complying with your request would exceed the appropriate limit by a significant amount.

For this reason we feel unable to comply with this request.