Selective Licensing costs used for Nottingham Carnival?

Reply to the comment left by Jessie Jones at 12/09/2019 – 22:32

Great idea.

The Nottingham FOI dept make it VERY HARD when they get awkward questions like this-It’s like they in the same bed as Licensing & get very defensive.

Note how all the staff (bar one good woman) will not put their name on the bottom of the reply, all illusive invisible hiding characters.

Keep us informed if/when u get your reply.

Reply to the comment left by Luke P at 12/09/2019 – 23:21
Thanks for clarifying 😀 always happy to do our bit, especially if it keeps things as fair as they can be in the curre t landscape.

Reply to the comment left by Jessie Jones at 12/09/2019 – 22:32
Do you have details of your FOI so I can monitor their response, please 🙂

Reply to the comment left by Luke P at 13/09/2019 – 10:27
FOI Request Details can be found here:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/how_was_the_nottingham_carnival#outgoing-930497

Reply to the comment left by Jessie Jones at 12/09/2019 – 22:03
” A carnival which is focused predominantly on one side of our community..”

What do you mean?

Reply to the comment left by Jay James at 13/09/2019 – 17:34
Your five day silence speaks volumes. This is not a good impression for land lords. Shelter and councils could use this to make land lords look even worse.

The response to Jessie Jones’ FOI is in…
“The council has considered your 2 requests which we received on 12 September
2019. Under Section 5 (2) of the Freedom of Information and Data Protection
(Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, requests can be aggregated where
(a) two or more requests relate, to any extent, to the same or similar information, and
(b) those requests are received by the public authority within any period of 60
consecutive working days. Your 2 requests have therefore been aggregated into one.
Our response to your questions is shown below
Request 1:
Please identify the number of Selective Licenses that have been applied for
under the Nottingham City Council Selective Licensing Scheme as of
31/07/2019.
Please indicate how many applications have been approved and how many
licenses have been granted.
Nottingham City Council’s Selective Licensing scheme started on 1 August 2018 and
is currently focussing on administering and processing applications. When the
scheme was proposed, the council anticipated that applications would not be made
uniformly over the duration of the 5 years of the scheme. As with previous similar
licensing schemes, the council projected a larger proportion of applications would
come at the start of the schemes introduction.
Issuing a selective licence requires the council to undertake appropriate checks and
balances to ensure when the licences are processed and determined they are done
correctly and comply with legislation. Applications are submitted via the council’s
online portal, all questions in the application must be fully answered and the
application must include all the required documents to support the application and the
first part of the fee. An application then needs to be validated by council officers, if not
all information and documents have provided the selective licensing team are unable
to process the application until this has been provided, which can often lead to delays.
Once all information and relevant documents have been submitted satisfactorily, an
officer may arrange an inspection if there are concerns about the property that has
been identified. This may affect the decision on whether to grant or refuse the licence.
The selective licensing team will then determine if the proposed licence holder and
manager are a fit and proper person, and if suitable management arrangements in
place. A draft licence is then issued and sent to the proposed licence holder and all
interested parties (extra conditions may be included as part of the licence to make the
property suitable.) The selective licensing team will then consider a representation if it
has been made. Finally, the licence is issued and comes into force. The council
continues to review to its processes to ensure it is efficient.
When calculating the fee for the scheme the council projected the time it would take
to process an application. Due to the high volume of applications received and the
checks and balances required to ensure licences are processed and determined
correctly and comply with legislation, it was anticipated that it would take a significant
amount of time to issue licenses from the initial batch of applications. It was
anticipated that the first 2 years of the scheme priorities would be processing licences
and this was identified in appendices within the Exec Board report – November 2016,
(Appendix 2 – Page 66) and in the Exec Board report – April 2018 (Appendix 3 table
1). It is encouraging that against what was projected by this point in the scheme, more
landlords have applied than was projected. Since The scheme, started 1 August 2018
4,871 (drafts licences issued) 632 (final licences issued)
Please also show how many have been refused for administrative reasons,
such as incomplete detail, and how many have been refused as unsuitable,
such as either the property or the landlord has failed to meet the required
standard.
A selective license would not be refused for ‘incomplete detail’, as per the response to
question 1 the council would just request further or missing information from an
applicant, unfortunately this can lead to delays in processing applications.
No licenses have been refused as unsuitable.
Request 2:
Would you please provide a list of any other payments made in excess of £100
by the Selective Licensing dept in respect of ‘adverts’ or ‘raising awareness’ in
the period 01/08/2018 to 31/07/2019. Please identify the events or publications
where such adverts appeared.
Arrow – £2,000.00
Facebook post – £300.00
2 x Facebook ads – £900.00
Kemet Radio Campaign – £588.00
GEM Radio Campaign – £4,500.00
Using the facilities at Forest Fields Welfare Association – £200.00
Nottingham Post – £1,970.07
Metro Newspaper – £2,060.64
Publicity set‐up costs – £132.57
Publicity set‐up costs – £2,240.51
Publicity set‐up costs – £2,389.90
Using the facilities at Forest Field Welfare Association – £200.00
Using the facilities at Forest Field Welfare Association – £200.00
Nottingham Carnival Flyer – £500.00”

Reply to the comment left by Luke P at 10/10/2019 – 21:53

That’s bull. I sat down with the two top men in Licensing approx April 2018 & they envisaged they’d get about 20,000 applications by 1 Aug. They got nowhere near.

What I say to Nottm FOI when they send these long winded replies, I say Hang on, u normally don’t want to talk nor reply. Now you’ve gave me an essay explaining this & that full of excuses. Which shows they in Licensing’s pocket. I just want a number How many Licenses? U confusing me with all this jargon language.

That’s shocking on the adverts costs. That’s tenants money that’s had to go without food, gas & electric to pay for that advertising.