FOI request (FOIR-622509682)

Overgrown hedges

Requested Thu 13 June 2024
Responded Mon 05 August 2024

Under the Freedom of Information Act, please could I request the following information:

1. From May 1st 2023 to May 1st 2024, how many complaints have been made about private gardens in relation to their maintenance such as high hedges, invasive weeds, severely overgrown shrubs/plants, and so on, or any other complaint relating to overgrown gardens? For each complaint could this be broken down into the following details:

a. Date of the complaint

b. The main reason cited in the complaint (for example, high hedges)

c. First part of the postcode for the property the complaint was made about. If this is not available, the first part of the postcode for the property making the complaint (for example, NG1). This then is not specific enough to identify the exact property.

2. From May 1st 2023 to May 1st 2024, how many private properties have received more than one complaint in relation to the maintenance of their garden such as high hedges, invasive weeds, severely overgrown shrubs/plants, and so on, or any other complaint relating to overgrown gardens? For each property, could this be broken down into the following details:

a. First part of the postcode for the property the complaint was made about (for example, NG1). This then isn’t specific enough to identify the exact property.

b. Total number of complaints about that property (within the given time period - May 1st 2023 - May 1st 2024).

If the full request to collect all of the data will exceed the cost limit set out in the FOIA, please only respond with the data for part 1 of the request.

Response

NOTICE OF REFUSAL

Hastings Borough Council has received 274 cases within the time frame requested. We do not hold a list of all these cases in the format being requested, and so we would need to manually check each case to establish if it falls into these categories. This would far exceed the time limit set out by the Information Commissioner. 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.