Complaints against landlords and letting agents (FOI)

Request

‘Could you let me know the number of complaints that have been made about landlords and letting agents in the past three years. Please provide the reason for complaints, and the number of prosecutions and fines.’

Response

Department of the Environment:

The Department does not hold any information relating to letting agents.

The Department’s Environmental Health section receives complaints about properties. In some cases information about a landlord may be provided and this will be logged in the system against the property address. However our database is property specific only and does not enable a search by landlord.

We estimate that it will take us in excess of 12.5 working hours to determine the information and extract it from our systems. Your request, therefore, will not be processed further.

Department for Community & Constitutional Affairs

Whilst the Strategic Housing Unit (part of the Department for Community & Constitutional Affairs) do receive complaints about landlords and letting agents, all complaints are referred to the Environmental Health team at the Department of the Environment. The Strategic Housing Unit does not hold a log of complaints which have been redirected.

There have been no prosecutions under the Residential Tenancy (Jersey) Law 2011. This Law relates to tenancy matters (the preparation of leases, tenancy deposit protection and condition reports).

Article applied

Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.