This is a request for information, filed under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. We wish to obtain information, from the Council, relating to unclaimed credits for non-domestic ratepayers. We are aware that all Billing Authorities hold on account sums of money that are due to be returned to business ratepayers and for a variety of reasons have not been repaid and maybe considered untraceable by the Council. This maybe because Companies do not know that there is an overpayment, they may have moved premises, merges and/or changed their name or simply ceased trading. In such circumstances, the monies could be due to the creditors of that company.

1. We therefore request a list of both credit balances and credit balance write ons accrued since your earliest records, for the amounts owing to all “incorporated” companies within the authorities billing area, including:
• The name of each ratepayer for which the credit or credit write on relates to.
• The value of overpayment in each case.
• The year(s) in which overpayment was made.
• The hereditament address.
We publish our Business Rates information, and update this on a regular basis. Therefore we are refusing this request under Section 21 and 22 of the Freedom of Information Act. This information can be found on the following page under the Business Rates category and we would ask you to bookmark this page for future reference if you find it of interest; http://www.wokingham.gov.uk/council-and-meetings/open-data/datasets-and-open-data

The public interest test has been considered and as the information is updated periodically, and resource is better utilised elsewhere within the authority, it is not appropriate to create the dataset outside of the usual scheduled slot.