Why Access to Public Sector Data Matters to Property Risk Intelligence

The subject can sound technical, but access to public data has practical consequences across the property industry – including for specialist providers who turn raw datasets into usable intelligence for conveyancers, lenders and other professionals.

PinPoint produces property risk reports covering coal mining, non-coal minerals, chancel repair liability and related risks. That work depends on bringing together a range of sources: public-sector datasets from HM Land Registry, Ordnance Survey and the British Geological Survey, together with local authority and environmental information. Each contributes to a fuller picture of risk.

The current rules generally allow public-sector information to be re-used at zero or low marginal cost. DSIT is examining the effect of that restriction and whether public bodies should, in some cases, be able to charge above marginal cost.

Our response

We argue that the existing approach has encouraged re-use of public data, supported competition and allowed specialist firms to develop new products and services.

Significantly widening the ability of public bodies to charge above marginal cost could fall particularly hard on smaller specialist providers. Higher charges for core datasets would raise the cost of producing property risk reports and make it harder for smaller businesses to compete with much larger organisations.

This risks reducing choice and innovation, with extra costs likely to pass through to property professionals and, ultimately, homebuyers.

We recommend retaining the marginal-cost default, with any exceptions kept limited and independently overseen.

I examined the ‘Re-use of Public Sector Information’ framework in detail through my LLM dissertation in Information Law and subsequent representative work with the EU Commission. Combined with PinPoint’s day-to-day work interpreting public-sector datasets for commercial risk products, that background informed our submission.

Access to public-sector information allows businesses like ours to add specialist knowledge and context so the underlying data becomes useful to the property industry. How that data is made available, and on what terms, therefore affects both innovation and the ability of specialist SMEs to operate alongside larger providers.

That is why we thought it important to contribute to the call for evidence.

At PinPoint our role is to combine information from different sources with specialist interpretation so that conveyancers and other property professionals can see what it means for a particular property or transaction. Data, expertise and interpretation sit at the centre of that work, which is why continued access to public sector data matters.

More on the call for evidence can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/calls-for-evidence/the-marginal-cost-restriction-on-public-sector-data-re-use-call-for-evidence/the-marginal-cost-restriction-on-public-sector-data-re-use.