The question to the Information Commissioners Office raised jointly by the PDPLA and Portsmouth City Council, asking for clarification on the councils interpretation of the Housing Act - specifically whether the council is obliged to give names and addresses of landlords of licensed HMO's in Southsea to anyone who asks, has resulted in a ruling that what PCC are doing is correct and legal.
We fear that our question was not properly understood and plan to appeal.
Part of the issue was that in PCC's input, they pointed out that many other towns do more than Portsmouth and publish details openly on the internet, and also, that to date they have only received 3 formal complaints on the matter.
Our own Tony Athill scoped out the next steps as follows:
"We need to make it clear to the ICO that we know access to this data is being abused in other cities but the landlords have not worked out how the details were obtained or have the evidence to prove it. If landlords were made aware we are sure there would be far more complaints. We have not attempted to get a mass lobby together in the understanding that the ICO investigate only individual complaints.
I think we all agree that the public should be able to check individual properties are licensed but making the contact details of all the licence holders public serves no acceptable purpose and what we are looking for is an adjudication of the LAs interpretation of the Housing Act, specifically; 232(5)If requested by a person to do so and subject to payment of such reasonable fee (if any) as the authority may determine, a local housing authority must supply the person with a copy (certified to be true) of the register or of an extract from it. I would argue that there is no reason that the "extract" should contain all the info. There would be no point in adding the words "or an extract" if it always had to be the entire register.
My suggestion would be that if the ICO think the LAs are correct then we should write to the Housing Minister. We know he is not a supporter of licensing so may be glad of a small nail to start building a coffin."