FOI request (FOIR-689528889)

Garden related complaints

Requested Fri 21 February 2025
Responded Fri 28 February 2025

I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The purpose of this request is to gather data on complaints received by your council regarding the state of gardens.

Specifically, I am seeking information on the following:

1. The total number of complaints received by the council about residential gardens for each of the past five years from 2020 to 2024.

2. If held, a breakdown of these complaints by category, indicating the nature of the complaint (for example, maintenance issues, dog fouling, safety concerns, rubbish complaints, overgrown, unsightly, and so on).

3. If held, any actions or measures taken by the council to address these complaints.

I would like you to provide the information in the following format:

Please provide the information in electronic format, preferably as an Excel spreadsheet or CSV file. Please avoid sending PDFs or Word documents if possible.

I have attached an Excel Template for your convenience. Please use this template where possible to ensure consistency and ease of data extraction.

If you are unable to provide the specified information:

If you cannot provide the specified information exactly as requested, please provide any data you have that is relevant to the request and explain why the other information cannot be provided.

Response

Hastings Borough Council is unable to break down your request on our current systems as they do not specify garden related complaints.

NOTICE OF REFUSAL

The information requested in respect of garden related complaints would require us to manually check each customer records over the last 5 years. This would far exceed the time limit set out by the Information Commissioner. 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 part of your request.