FOI_26-143 Fine art and silverware asset registry
Date of response: 04 August 2026
We have now considered your request of 03 July 2026 for the following information:
Question 1. A list of the university’s current asset register or inventory for fine art, paintings, sculptures and historic silver for items that have an individual estimated insurance value of £5,000 or more. If already held, please include the specific amount.
Question 2. The most recent total insurance valuation for the university’s entire fine art/heritage asset collection and when it was completed.
Question 3. For any item valued over £5,000, please provide its description, the artist (if known), its current status or location category – for example: on public display, on internal/non-public display, held in storage, on loan, or undergoing conservation – and whether it was purchased by the university or acquired via a gift/bequest.
Please provide the responses to questions 1 and 3 as a CSV.
Our response:
We regret that on this occasion it is not possible to provide the requested information.
Under Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act, we can confirm that the University does hold the information requested, however on this occasion it is not possible for us to provide any of the information relating to current asset register or inventory for fine art, paintings, sculptures and historic silver for items that have an individual estimated insurance value of £5,000 or more, and for any item over £5,000 it’s description. Artist, status or location category.
We have determined that the cost of finding and assembling the requested information will exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ as defined by section 12 of the Act and the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004/3244.
'The ‘appropriate limit’ of £450, which equates to 18 hours’ work, as defined by the Information Commissioner’s Office, can relate to one request in its entirety or to a series of linked requests. If the University cannot locate, retrieve and extract some or all of the requested information within the 18 hours we are not obliged to retrieve any of the requested information.
Information relating to current assets within our inventory, specifically those under the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (SCVA), is held within SCVA, and some data is also held within our Finance Planning and Governance (FPG) division, however the University have not undertaken a full valuation of all fine art, paintings, sculptures and historic silver items, nor do we have an asset registry containing all items, or for those items over £5,000 their description, their value, the artist and the location category of those items.
We have not obtained professional valuations for all Sainsbury Centre exhibits in recent years, therefore a complete list of all items over £5,000 would need to be produced internally and would require the professional judgement of our staff. Some exhibits held by the University are recorded and valuations monitored, however a complete valuation of collections for insurance purposes has not been undertaken.
To provide to you the response to question 1 and 3 for all fine art/paintings, sculptures, and historic silver, inclusive of SCVA, would require manual review of all SCVA items and any associated paperwork or documentation we may hold, plus specialist researching and judgement of current values of those items in order to ascertain which are valued over £5000 explicitly. We would also need to review each item manually to disclose the artist, where known, provide a description of each item and note the location category.
We have identified a minimum of 5,000 items under the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, which may fall into the scope of your request. The only way of identifying, extracting and recording the exact information you seek, for items valued over £5,000, would be to interrogate any documentation or financial valuations associated with SCVA artefacts manually. We cannot confirm that the information will be complete however, as not all items have been individually valued and associated paperwork may be incomplete or not held by the Sainsbury Centre.
We have calculated it would take an average minimum of 2 minutes per piece of fine art/painting/sculpture/historic silverware, or 166 hours, to locate and manually interrogate any associated paperwork we may hold, research any current value, and note the other information as per your request. Which exceeds the appropriate time-limit as outlined above.
Under section 16 of the Act, and to assist you in formulating a request to which we can respond, we would be able to provide to you one central document held by our Finance, Planning and Governance department which outlines a partial inventory for fine art, paintings, sculptures and historic silver that have an individual estimated insurance value of £5,000 or more (question 1 and 3). However, this will not include the total inventory inclusive of SCVA items.
Regarding question 2, a complete valuation of the collection for insurance purposes has not been undertaken, so this information is not held by the University. Our Finance, Planning and Governance department monitor insurance valuations for certain exhibits, but we have not done so for the complete SCVA collection, nor is this maintained internally, therefore we can only provide incomplete data regarding valuations, as noted above. This is held in one document.
Please note we have considered whether any exemptions may apply to such a revised request for just centrally held incomplete inventory, and the location of those items, whether in storage or on display, may be exempted under Section 31 of the Freedom of Information Act.
We should also point out that any revised request you submit will be treated as a new FOI request, and the 20 working-day time-limit will begin again.
We are sorry we cannot provide the data you requested, but trust this response explains our position.