Real estate owned/operated by the MPS

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.23.030205

I note you seek access to the following information:

I would like a list of all real estate owned and/or operated by the MPS providing the full address, borough, tenure (freehold/leasehold/lease etc), use (policing, commercial, etc), cost of acquisition (if freehold/leasehold), rental cost (if rented, providing the payment frequency), operational cost (not including staffing).

Please include all real estate, if it is within the City of London please could this be clearly noted. If it is outside Greater London could this please be clearly noted.

Decision

I have today decided to disclose some of the requested information. Some data has been withheld as it is exempt from disclosure and therefore this response serves as a Refusal Notice under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act) by virtue of the following exemptions:

Section 43(2) – Commercial Interest
Section 40(2)(3) – Personal Information

Reason for decision

Section 43 (2) - Commercial Interests - (2) Information is exempt information if its disclosure under this Act would, or would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of any person (including the public authority holding it).

As outlined in the reasons for decision section, in order for the above exemption to be engaged the MPS must show that disclosure under the Act would, or would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of any person (including the public authority holding it).

In this case, this exemption has been applied as disclosure of the rental cost information would prejudice the commercial interest of the MPS.

In this case disclosing any costs in relation to rental costs could result in the MPS attracting less favourable prices in the future if they believed such details would be made public. Furthermore release of rent amounts would be detrimental to the MPS and may prevent the Authority from being able to archive best value when negotiating future rents with landlords, as it would disclose how much the MPS are paying for comparable properties at this current time.

Disclosure of the requested information would prejudice the commercial interests of the MPS because the disclosure of costs, would set a 'benchmark' which potential Authorities could use to compare their proposed costs to. This would therefore have a negative impact on the competitive nature of the tendering process. There is a public interest in ensuring that companies are able to compete fairly. Disclosing the information could also provide competitors with an unfair advantage. Full disclosure would weaken the position of the MPS in a competitive environment by revealing market-sensitive information. This would have a harmful effect on future partnerships when entering into commercial activities.

I consider that the benefit that would result from the information being disclosed does not outweigh the considerations favouring non-disclosure.

Section 40 (2)(a)(b) & (3)(a)(i – Personal Information - This is an absolute exemption which means that the legislators have identified that harm would be caused by any release. In addition there is no requirement to consider the public interest test.

In order to apply the Section 40(2) exemption the disclosure of the requested information must satisfy either the first, second or third conditions as defined by subsections 3(a), 3(b) and 4(c) of the Data Protection Act 2018.

The first condition ensures that the exemption would apply in circumstances where the disclosure of the information would breach any of the Data Protection Act 2018 principles.

There are six Data Protection principles set out in the 2018 act and these can be found at section 34.

In this instance I have decided that the disclosure of Personal Data would be incompatible with the first Data Protection principle which states that the processing (in this case the disclosure) of the data must be both lawful and fair.

Disclosure

Please see the attached spreadsheet which provides the full address, borough, tenure, use and operational costs.

In relation to the acquisition data, this information is not readily available due to the purchase of some of the MOPAC estate dating back to the 1800’s and much of the remaining MOPAC Owned estate being purchased more than 60 years ago.

The MPS would need to go through hundreds of archived hard copy documents relating in order to locate information about the purchases of sites, this alone would exceed the time cost threshold.