Age assessment (Home Office 15/03/09)

Dear Sir or Madam,

Can you please email me a copy of the following information:

1) A copy of all the minutes, you hold, of the The Age Assessment
Working Group

1.1) A copy of the The Age Assessment Working Group's paper
outlining options for revised age assessment guidelines

2) A copy of all the minutes, you hold, of the joint UKBA/ Local
Government Association (LGA) group which is considering front end
processing issues affecting UASC, e.g. routing of UASC to
specialist authority and the feasibility of Regional Assessment
Centres.

3) Copies of minutes, you hold, for any Group you know of or are
part of, that has a bearing on the UKBA UASC Reform Programme, such
as the one working on resolving future post-18 funding issues.
Applicants in this category are those who were granted leave to
remain under the UASC Discretionary Leave policy and have since
turned 18.

References to the above requests:

"A working group made up of representatives of the UK Border
Agency, major intake authorities, the Association of Directors of
Children’s Services, the medical colleges, the Refugee Children’s
Consortium and the Children’s Commissioner for England has been
tasked with formulating, before the end of the year,
recommendations for improvement of the age assessment process."
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa...

"The Age Assessment Working Group has produced a paper outlining
options for revised age assessment guidelines. While we consider
this, the social worker assessment will continue to be the primary
means of assessing age."
http://www.lg-em.gov.uk/ppimageupload/Im...

"We are also setting up a joint UKBA/ Local Government Association
(LGA) group to consider other front end processing issues affecting
UASC, e.g. routing of UASC to specialist authority and the
feasibility of Regional Assessment Centres.

We have also set up a working group consisting of representatives
from the LGA and our organisation to resolve future post-18 funding
issues Applicants in this category are those who were granted leave
to remain under the UASC Discretionary Leave policy and have since
turned 18."
http://www.lg-em.gov.uk/ppimageupload/Im...

4) Acceptable disclosure formats:

When proving this information please provide it in the original
format such as:

a. MS Word .doc or Rich Text Text .rtf format or equivalent

b. Plain text .txt format

c.Spreadsheets in MS Excel .xls format or equivalent

d.Presentations in MS Powerpoint .ppt format or equivalent

or in Portable Document Format (PDF), only if none of the above
formats are available

if you only have a paper version (hard copy) available, please
provide a Digital Photo Copier Scanned version in PDF format.

Disclosing information in these formats will help ensure the
information is accessible for use with a Screen Reader or
Magnifier. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_reader>

Yours faithfully,

Cassidy, J

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Home Office's
handling of my FOI request 'Age assessment (Home Office 15/03/09)'.

This request is currently overdue a response from Home Office. By
law, the response had to be prompt but no later than 16 April 2009

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ag...

Yours sincerely,

Cassidy, J

Dear Freedom Of Information Team ( IND ),

This is a reminder that you promised earlier that today, 13 May
2009, I would be provided with a finalised response to my request
of 15 March 2009, which was originally due on 16 April 2009.

Yours sincerely,

Cassidy, J

Dear Freedom Of Information Team ( IND ),

Further to your most recent letter (copy below), can you advise why
my request is being delayed without explanation?

Your letter:

"

J Cassidy

[email address]

(by email)

Email

[email address]

Web www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk

14 April 2009

Ref: 11459

Dear J Cassidy,

Thank you for your email of 16 March 2009 where you have requested
information about Age Assessment. This falls to be dealt with under
the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

We are considering your information request. Although the Freedom
of Information Act carries a presumption in favour of disclosure,
it provides exemptions which may be used to withhold information in
specified circumstances. Some of these exemptions are subject to a
public interest test. These exemptions are known as qualified
exemptions. The public interest test is used to balance the public
interest in disclosure against the public interest in favour of
withholding the information under qualified exemptions. Section
10(3) of the Act allows us to exceed the 20 working day response
target where reasonably necessary to consider the public interest
test fully. This is subject to us telling applicants when we expect
to conclude our deliberations and provide a full response.

The information requested must be considered under the exemption
contained within section 35 of the Act. This is a qualified
exemption relating to the formulation or development of government
policy. In order to consider the public interest test fully we need
to extend the 20 working day response period, and now aim to
respond by 13 May.

Should you have any queries about the handling of your information
request then please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours sincerely,

S Goddard

Information Access Policy Team "

Yours sincerely,

Cassidy, J