Hip view (Home Information Packs and Energy Performance Certificates EPC

In a case that will have a bearing on the UK ICO decission regarding the current claims by search companies that all information required to produce local searches is environmental and should be free the Dutch Council of State ruled that Amsterdam City cannot charge for the reuse of information.

More about the Court decision:

The Judicial Division of the Dutch Council of State (Raad van State), the highest Administrative Court in the Netherlands, on 29 April 2009 published a ruling on the public sector information re-use case Landmark versus City of Amsterdam.

The Court rejected the appeal lodged by the City for high compensation costs for supplying information costs for supplying environmental information to real estate agents for the benefit of home owners and home buyers through Landmark Nederland’s Milieuscan environmental reports service.

The dispute between Landmark and the City concerns the question whether the City could attach a number of conditions and limitations to the reuse of the data by Landmark. Two conditions must be fulfilled: there must be a database and the government agency must be the producer of that database.

The Court ruled that, while the data form a database because there has been a substantial investment, the City of Amsterdam does not bear the risk of this substantial investment, and is therefore not a producer of the database. Consequently the City is not entitled to attach the excessive (financial) conditions and limitations to the reuse of the data by Landmark.

More about Landmark:

Landmark Nederland is part of Landmark Information Group Ltd which is a Daily Mail and General Trust Group company. Landmark provides over 1 million environmental and of land use reports a year for homebuyers and property professionals in Europe. Landmark operates in Germany via its company based in Dortmund, Inframation AG.

The revised regulations for the implementation of charging for access to public information should have been laid before Parliament yesterday. This did not happen which is good news for the home seller as this legislation is likely to increase the price of a Home Information Pack.

They may be laid on Monday but let’s hope that the House is so busy they miss it again. These regulations are not good news for the house sellers and buyers nor for the search and Hip industry. It is just one more way of monopolies acting in a way to kill off competition