Response 4012793
Response to request for information
Reference
4012793
Response date
15 May 2026
Request
Under section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), I would like to request a copy of Rushcliffe Borough Council's premises licence register as currently held under the Licensing Act 2003. I would be grateful if the data could be provided in a machine-readable format (CSV, XLSX, or JSON in preference to PDF). For each licensed premises currently in force, the fields I am requesting are:
- Premises name and any trading name
- Full address including postcode
- Licence number and/or reference
- Date the current licence was issued and/or start date
- Licensable activities permitted
- Permitted hours
- Current designated premises supervisor (DPS), where applicable
- Current licence holder
I am happy to receive the data via email attachment, or via a download link if that is more practical. Please confirm receipt of this request. If any part of this request is unclear, or if a partial response would require fee approval, I would welcome the opportunity to refine the scope rather than receive a refusal.
Response
The information requested is exempt under section 21 of the FOIA because it is reasonably accessible to you and the terms of the exemption mean that we do not have to consider whether or not it would be in the public interest for you to have the information. I am pleased to inform you that you can access the information you have requested on our website via the link given below.
This can be viewed at Applications Search ensuring you select licensing in the advanced search.
Review
Thank you for your response to my request, which directed me to the council's published licensing register.
I'm grateful for the pointer, but I'd like to politely request that you reconsider the response under section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. (FOIA)
Section 21 ("information accessible to the applicant by other means") applies where the information is reasonably accessible. A browser-paginated HTML interface is not reasonably accessible for the analytical purpose I explained in my original request, which was a copy of the register in a machine-readable format (CSV, XLSX, or JSON) for each licensed premises currently in force.
The Information Commissioner has held in multiple decision notices that where the council holds the underlying data in a structured form (which will be the case for any licensing register accessible online), the requestor's preferred format under section 11 of the Act should be honoured where reasonably practicable. Generating a CSV export from your licensing system imposes minimal additional burden and is reasonable in the context of my request.
Could you please therefore provide the register as a CSV, XLSX, or JSON attachment? The fields I'm requesting are unchanged from my original
message:
- Premises name and any trading name
- Full address including postcode
- Licence number / reference
- Date the current licence was issued / start date
- Licensable activities permitted
- Permitted hours (where summarised in your register)
- Current designated premises supervisor (DPS), where applicable
- Current licence holder
If a CSV export isn't technically possible from your licensing system, please confirm that in writing, and I'd be happy to discuss whether a PDF or print of the full register would be a workable alternative.
I treat this email as a request for an internal review under section 17.
Response
We have now conducted this review and the decision has been upheld for the following reasons:
We took your review to be a claim that the information was not reasonably accessible for you because it was not reasonably accessible in a machine-readable format. We have considered both whether your particular requirements amount to a barrier to the information being accessible and the reason that the information is published.
The Public Licensing Register is part of the Council’s publication scheme, as required by the Licensing Act 2003. Information that a public authority is obliged to communicate to members of the public is taken to be reasonably accessible and therefore exempt from disclosure under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) section 21(2)(b). There is no requirement to consider the requester’s personal circumstances in relation to this type of information. We therefore hold that providing you with the link to the public register was sufficient to make it reasonably accessible and the exemption in FOIA section 21 was properly applied.
Where information is exempt from disclosure under section 1 of the FOIA, the Information Commissioners' Office (ICO) has determined that there is no further requirement to consider whether it needs to be provided again in an alternative format in accordance with FOIA section 11. The Council rely on the ICO guidance which cites the decision notice (FS50368428) in the First Tier Tribunal matter of Liam Costello v the ICO (EA/2011/0291) confirming that the section 11 provisions relating to the means of communication need only be considered where information is not exempt from disclosure.
Section 16 Advice and Assistance
Notwithstanding that the type of information requested is exempt (provided that a local licensing authority has complied with its publication duties), we considered whether the fact that published information was not machine readable could be considered a barrier to its accessibility. We determined that this was not supported by the guidance. The guidance on accessibility relates to particular aspects of the requester such as an inability to attend offices during regular hours. It does not apply to the particular purpose of the request such as ease of computer generated statistical analysis.
We also made enquiries to ascertain whether conversion of the published register to a different format could be achieved without a minimal burden to the public authority. It appears that this is not the case, and a considerable input of officer time would be required to manually re-order the register.