Dear Tessa Gray,

Thank you for your request dated 26 February 2009 in which you have requested information on the number of children of failed asylum seekers living on vouchers provided under Section 4. This falls to be dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

As part of the Home Office, 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.

I can 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.

As at the 1st March 2009 there were 10,746 cases supported under Section 4.  There were 13,933 persons associated with these cases of whom 2,346 were under 18.  It is not possible to say whether all persons under 18 were children of failed asylum seekers, some may be related in other ways, such as siblings. Figures are based on management information. This information has not been quality assured under National Statistics protocols, is subject to change and should be treated as provisional.

The set of all section 4 cases where there is a person under 18 in the household would have to be examined to establish how many of those individuals were not categorised as a son or daughter.  It would then be necessary to examine those records individually to determine whether the information had been captured and if not to contact those persons to find out if their parents were failed asylum seekers or not.

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.

Even if a new request were to fall below the £600 cost limit, the information you request might be withheld under the terms of a number of substantive exemptions contained in part II of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. These exemptions could also make it necessary for us to extend the period for responding beyond the usual 20 working day target if they involve having to consider the public interest balancing test.

Support under Section 4 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 is provided in the form of accommodation and vouchers to cover the cost of food and other basic essential items. Individuals are generally eligible for Section 4 support if their asylum application has been finally determined as refused but they are destitute and there are reasons that temporarily prevent them from leaving the United Kingdom.

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

Head of Information Access Policy Team

(Freedom of Information)

11th floor - short corridor

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,

S Goddard

Information Access Policy Team

UK Border Agency