Dear A. Ahmed

RE: FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST 11824

Thank you for your letter asking for information about the qualifying periods for settlement applications. Please accept my apologies for the delay in responding to your request and for any inconvenience that this has caused.

Below is a link to the guidance which is on the UKBA website, in particular section 1 and section 6A are relevant. The first deals with settlement under non-Point Based System (PBS) routes and the second with applications made under PBS routes (but also includes provision for those affected by the HSMP Forum JR ruling). Both contain guidance about the continuous residence requirement which is given at annex A.

http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/documents/policyandlaw/IDIs/idischapter6/

As you have pointed out, UKBA guidance on applying for settlement in the UK as given on the website at:

http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/ukresidency/settlement/

clearly states that applications may be made up to 28 days before the end of the qualifying period.

It is not clear from your letter exactly what information concerning these policies that you require. However, the scenario that I believe you are describing may refer to a situation where a person is applying for settlement to be granted on reaching the required point of continuous residence (e.g. 5 years for a work permit holder), his current leave expires on exactly the date he reaches the 5 year (or other) point and he makes his application 28 days in advance of the expiry of his leave either in person at a PEO or by postal application. In this scenario, the applicant would not have fully completed the period of continuous residence required at the point that he applies.

In this type of situation, normal operational procedure is to exercise discretion and consider the application as if the full period had been completed, but the applicant would be expected to show that they fully meet all the requirements of the rules applicable.

In addition you have asked for statistics on the total number of ILR requests granted up to 28 days before completion of the qualifying period for HSMP after April 2006, to include both personal and postal applications.

Under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act, the UK Border Agency 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 government departments and is based on work being carried out at a rate of £25 per hour, which equates to 3½ 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.

We hold the information in which you are interested, but have estimated that the cost of answering your request would exceed the £600 limit and we are therefore unable to comply with it. We are unable to track migrant journeys using the reporting tools available to us. Therefore, whilst it is possible to identify all those applicants who have applied for ILR under the HSMP rules we are unable to identify whether they applied for ILR more than 28 days before the expiry of their previous LTR. In order to do this we would need to look at each individual application for HSMP ILR and then compare these with their respective LTR applications in order to determine the number of days between the expiry of the original leave and the application date for LTR, which could only be done at disproportionate cost.

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 Border and Immigration Agency sending a substantive reply to your original request and should be addressed  to:

Information Access Policy Team

11^th floor, Lunar House

40 Wellesley Road

Croydon

CR9 2BY

During the independent review the department's handling of your information request will be reassessed by staff 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.

Yours sincerely

C. King

Senior Policy Advisor

Freedom of Information Team