Dear Ms Ann Brown

Thank you for your email of the 3 September where you have requested information regarding `the number of EU (and EU States) (non-British) refugees have the Home Office s deported back to the EU Country of origin, where refugee status was first gained In the last 5 years? This falls to be dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) 2000.

As part of the Home Office, UKBA is not obliged to comply with any information request where the prescribed costs of supplying you with the information exceed £600. The £600 limit applies to all central departments and is based on work being carried out at a rate of £25 per hour, which equates to 31/2 days work per request. Prescribed costs include those which cover the cost of locating and retrieving information, and preparing our response to you. They do not include considering whether any information is exempt from disclosure overheads such as heating or lighting, or disbursements such as photocopying or postage.

I confirm that we do hold information which you are interested in but have estimated that

the cost of answering your request would exceed the £600 limit and we are therefore unable to comply with it. Although your request would at present be too costly to answer, if you refine it so that it falls under the cost limit we will consider it further.

Regrettably UKBA do not hold information on the number of refugees removed to EU countries in the last 5 years as the Casework Information Database (CID) which holds immigration statistics was only introduced into the responsible Unit in 2004 and correct statistics are only available from that year and subsequent years. Furthermore the FOI request you have made would require all removals to EU states since 2004 to be examined on an individual basis as CID does not distinguish the removal of refugees. We would need to examine in excess of 5000 cases removed to Member States to see which one had refugee status.

Should you require and request information relating to the numbers of overall removals to EU Member States for calendar years 2004 onwards this information could be provided.

You should however be aware that if you break your request down into a series of smaller requests, we might, depending on the circumstances of the case, decline to answer if the aggregated cost of complying exceeds £600, as permitted by the Fees Regulations.

If you are dissatisfied with this response you may request an independent internal review of our handling of your request. Internal review requests should be submitted within two months of the United Kingdom and Border Agency sending a substantive reply to your original request and should be addressed to:

UK Border Agency

Central Freedom of Information Team

11^th Floor

Lunar House, Short Corridor

40 Wellesley Road

Croydon

CR9 2BY.

During the independent review the department's handling of your information request will be reassessed by staffs who were not involved in providing you with this response. Should you remain dissatisfied after this internal review, you will have a right of complaint to the Information Commissioner as established by section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act.

I realize that this reply may be a disappointment to you, but I look forward to hearing from you again shortly should you wish to refine your request.

Yours sincerely

Mrs J Dobson

United Kingdom Border Agency

London and South East Asylum Region

Regional Immigration Team 7, Area 3

Third Country Unit/UK Dublin Office