Use of MPs' constituency offices by third parties

Request

I would like to be provided with: Records of instances where licences or permissions were granted by MPs to any other person to use their constituency office, or any part of it, for the period 1 January 2015 to present.

I would like the information in Excel or CSV file format listing:

  1. The name of the MP

  2. The address of the constituency office rented

  3. The dates of the period the constituency office was rented

  4. The individual or business who rented the office

  5. The fee charged by the MP

  6. The reason (if applicable)

Response

Chapter Six of the Scheme of MPs’ Business Costs and Expenses (‘the Scheme’) states: where MPs grant a licence or give permission to any other person to use the constituency office, or any part of it, a fee must be charged which reflects an appropriate proportion of the rent and other costs incurred. The fee must be remitted to IPSA in its entirety.

Repayments are made to our finance team, and details of any such repayments are published against the MP’s account on our website.

However, these repayments are not separately categorised on our system from other repayments made by MPs. As such, to identify those relating to the use of offices by others, we would need to manually inspect the paperwork associated with all repayments. Unfortunately, the amount of time it would take to locate, retrieve and extract this information from our systems would exceed the appropriate cost limit of £450 (part 1 of Schedule 1 of the Freedom of Information Act). Consequently, IPSA is not able to respond to your request (see section 12(1), FOIA).

Ref:
CAS-98843
Disclosure:
15 December 2017
Categories:
MPs' OFFICE COSTS
Exemptions Applied:
Cost limit