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.

Summary:

Birmingham Trading Standards will not be pursuing any further action in relation to the particular searches involved in the investigation. It believes that the public interest is best served by local authorities working with the industry to iron out teething problems.

Birmingham Trading Standards would state that it has not uncovered any evidence to support officers’ initial suspicion that ‘private search companies are short circuiting the system to save money’.

Detail

We make the following statement further to our press release of 30 September 2008. Follow-up work has been ongoing in respect of the Home Information Pack (HIP) investigation. Commercial HIPs providers and their personal search partners who were the subject of our preliminary survey have been fully cooperative and have indicated that they are committed to the highest possible standards of service.

We recognise that where errors in searches occur, fault does not necessarily lie with the commercial HIP provider or their personal search partners, as they are obliged to compile information obtained from reliable sources which may not always be accurate for reasons beyond their control. Means of resolving these problems are being explored with the commercial HIP providers and their personal search partners to try and reduce any margin for error.

In the circumstances, Birmingham Trading Standards will not be pursuing any further action in relation to the particular searches involved in this survey. It believes that the public interest is best served by local authorities working with the industry to iron out teething problems.

Birmingham Trading Standards would state that it has not uncovered any evidence to support officers’ initial suspicion that ‘private search companies are short circuiting the system to save money’.

Birmingham Trading Standards would like to stress that its comments made in its earlier press release were initial observations only on its survey and were subject to receipt of explanations from the commercial HIP providers and their personal search partners concerned. Trading Standards is pleased to say that it is fully satisfied with the explanations provided by the companies the subject of the survey. Birmingham Trading Standards would like to make it clear that no adverse inferences should be drawn from its initial comments.

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