I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, asking for the following information about your Council’s activities. The requests relate to both your planning and your housing enforcement duties. The requests are as follows:

1. How many private sector rented housing enforcement officers, or equivalent, have you had in each of the last 5 years?
4

2. How many public sector rented housing enforcement officers, or equivalent, have you had in each of the last 5 years?
0

3. How many planning enforcement officers have you had in each of the last 5 years?
2017: 4.5
2018: 4.5
2019: 6
2020: 6
2021: 6

4. What has the budget of your public and private sector housing enforcement teams been in each of the last 5 years?
It is not possible to provide budget figures for public and private sector housing enforcement teams in each of the last 5 years. The reason being that staff employed in this role also have other environmental health and environmental protection duties as part of a generic service. In years prior to 2022/23 it was provided as part of a service provided by a three borough Public Protection Partnership, delivering a wide range of services. There was therefore no specific and exclusive budget for housing enforcement

5. What has the budget of your planning enforcement teams been in each of the last 5 years?
All our officers have the same title “specialist”. Planning officers do enforcement work and enforcement officers are qualified planners who also do planning application work. The salary budget is:
2017/18: 1,538,030
2018/19: 865,780
2019/20: 762,850
2020/21: 1,139,010
2021/22: 1,556,770

6. Do you have any private rented sector housing intelligence officers, and if so how many?
0

7. If applicable, what is the budget of the PRS housing intelligence team?
Not applicable