Dear Mr Blair,

Freedom of Information Request - 11198 - Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC)

We wrote to you on 3 March 2009 concerning your Freedom of Information request about the UASC Reform Programme.

We explained that the information requested must be considered under the exemptions contained within section 43(2) of the Act. These exemptions are qualified exemptions which means that a public interest test is used to balance the public interest in disclosure against the public interest in favour of withholding the information under the qualified exemption. Under Section 10(3) of the Act we extended the 20 day response period in order to carry out the public interest test and informed you that we now hoped to respond to you by 6 April 2009.

We are considering your information request however a further extension is required in order to consider the public interest test fully. I apologise for the delay in dealing with your request and assure you that we are dealing with this as a matter of urgency. We hope to send you a substantive reply by 30 April 2009.

Yours sincerely

Jerry Harland

UASC Reform Programme