The Netherlands - Court Ruling on Availability of Public Sector Information

Landmark is the first organisation in The Netherlands to have brought together a national dataset of environmental risks such as contaminated land from a range of sources including Dutch council records. This data is used to create a portfolio of products including Milieuscan environmental reports for home buyers, which sell via estate agency brokers.

The Milieuscan reports were launched in 2006 with the co-operation of national and local authorities providing supporting data for environmental search purposes. However, the City of Amsterdam sought substantial compensation for supplying the data and also wanted to limit its reuse, arguing a substantial investment had been made in compiling the original dataset. However, after three years of legal hearings, the Dutch Raad van State, the highest Administrative Court in the Netherlands, ruled that the City of Amsterdam does not bear the risk of investment in the database as this has to be provided and funded anyway as part of the City's public task. Consequently, the City is not entitled to attach excessive financial conditions and limitations to the reuse of the data by Landmark.

Managing Director of Landmark Nederland, Geoff Offen, said: “This decision represents a significant step forward on the issue of public sector data re-use in The Netherlands and also has ramifications across Europe. Our long-running campaign to unlock the value in public data on fair terms has been supported by the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM) in the Netherlands, as well as the European Commission which is actively promoting good practice from public sector information holders across Europe in making their information more readily accessible at marginal cost”.

“We are now investing further in our portfolio of industry and consumer products and expanding our services across both The Netherlands and Germany. We will continue to work closely with local authorities in all our areas of operation to ensure information on crucial issues such as pollution and other environmental hazards is made more accessible to both the public and the industry.”

Landmark’s range of environmental, planning and neighbourhood information reports are endorsed by the real estate organisations NVM and LMV and can be viewed at www.landmarkinfo.nl. The reports can be obtained from all leading estate agents.

Ends

Media Contacts:

For further details please contact Geoff Offen at +31 (0) 30 6005300 or Trimedia Sara Meulenbroek +31 (0) 23 7503210 ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ).

Notes to Editors:

More about the Court decision:

The Judicial Division of the Dutch Council of State (Raad van State), the highest Administrative Court in the Netherlands, on 29 April 2009 published a ruling on the public sector information re-use case Landmark versus City of Amsterdam.

The Court rejected the appeal lodged by the City for high compensation costs for supplying information costs for supplying environmental information to real estate agents for the benefit of home owners and home buyers through Landmark Nederland's Milieuscan environmental reports service.

The dispute between Landmark and the City concerns the question whether the City could attach a number of conditions and limitations to the reuse of the data by Landmark. Two conditions must be fulfilled: there must be a database and the government agency must be the producer of that database.

The Court ruled that, while the data form a database because there has been a substantial investment, the City of Amsterdam does not bear the risk of this substantial investment, and is therefore not a producer of the database. Consequently the City is not entitled to attach the excessive (financial) conditions and limitations to the reuse of the data by Landmark.

More about Landmark:

Landmark Nederland is part of Landmark Information Group Ltd which is a Daily Mail and General Trust Group company. Landmark provides over 1 million environmental and of land use reports a year for homebuyers and property professionals in Europe. Landmark operates in Germany via its company based in Dortmund, Inframation AG.

Landmark’s Websites:

www.landmarkinfo.nl

www.landmark.co.uk

www.landmark.de