Applications from students with Discretionary Leave to Remain

Dear Mr Lee

Thank you for your email dated 06/05/2011 requesting information under the
Freedom of Information Act 2000. Your request has been logged under
reference 42-11. Please quote this reference in future communications.

A full response will be issued in due course.

Kind regards

Louise Waddell
Freedom of Information Office
Student Loans Company
100 Bothwell Street
Glasgow
G2 7JD

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Lee

I refer to your e-mail dated 06/05/2011 requesting the following
information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA):

“I would like to know the following information in relation to applications
for student support for the academic years 2008/09, 2009/10 and 2010/11
from applicants who, although considered not to qualify for recognition as
refugees, were granted Discretionary Leave to Remain in the UK or
Discretionary Leave to Enter the UK.
1. The total number of applications for student support in each of
the academic years.
2. The number of applications granted for fee loans in each of the
academic years.
3. The number of applications granted for maintenance loans in each
of the academic years.
4. The number of applications for student support in each of the
academic years which were initially refused.
5. The number of applications for fee loans initially refused but
which were then successful following a reassessment upon receipt of
further evidence.
6. The number of applications for maintenance loans initially refused
but which were then successful following a reassessed upon receipt of
further evidence.”

Response to Questions 1 to 3

| 2008/0 | | 2009/1 | | 2010/1 | | | |
| 9 | | 0 | | 1 | | | |
-------------------------------+---------+--------+---------+--------+---------+-------+---+---+---
Number of Customers with | 1,603 | | 1,185 | | 1,128 | | | |
Discretionary Leave to | | | | | | | | |
Remain in or Enter the UK | | | | | | | | |
-------------------------------+---------+--------+---------+--------+---------+-------+---+---+---
Number approved with | | 1,453 | | 1,043 | | 978 | | |
Maintenance Loan entitlement | | | | | | | | |
-------------------------------+---------+--------+---------+--------+---------+-------+---+---+---
Number approved with Tuition | | 1,095 | | 918 | | 856 | | |
Fee Loan entitlement | | | | | | | | |

Please note the following caveats in relation to the above figures:
The figures are for full-time applications.
The count of customers with Discretionary Leave to Remain or Enter
the UK is taken from section 3, question A7 of the full-time
application form where this is flagged as “Y” for “Yes”.
The figures cover England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The figures exclude withdrawn applications and online applications
not submitted.
The figures include those applications which have ever been approved,
but may not currently be approved.

Response to Questions 4 to 6

Unlike the information falling under questions 1 to 3 there are no specific
fields or records in our systems which record this information. The only
way to answer these questions would be to identify the relevant
applications indicated above and manually review every application to
establish which applications were initially refused then establish if the
applications were subject to a re-assessment following further evidence
being provided. Manually reviewing over 3,900 applications would be an
enormous task and would involve the following work:
Identifying the individual accounts concerned
Reviewing every account individually to establish the stage an
application was approved
Separating applications which were approved at the outset from
applications which were approved at a later stage
Collating the above information

The review stage alone would take approximately 780 hours (calculated at
number of applications to review x 12 minutes per application). I have
concluded that this information cannot be released as the cost of complying
with this part of your request would exceed the appropriate costs limit
under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Under the Freedom
of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations
the limit applying to SLC is £600 or 3.5 days (calculated to be 24 hours of
staff time at £25 per hour).

Complaints Procedure

I trust that my answer to you is satisfactory; however, if you are unhappy
with the decisions made by me in relation to your freedom of information
request, you may ask SLC for an internal review.

Any such appeal would be conducted by Chris Andrew, Company Secretary, 100
Bothwell Street, Glasgow, G2 7JD. You may request a review by writing to
Chris Andrew or by emailing the FOI Office
([SLC request email]). SLC will only consider requests for
internal reviews which are made within 3 months of the date of our original
response (except in exceptional circumstances).

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have
the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision.
The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely

Louise Chapman
Freedom of Information Officer
Student Loans Company
100 Bothwell Street
Glasgow
G2 7JD
Tel: 0141 243 3062

|---------+------------------------------------------->
| | James Lee |
| | <request-70676-9a494fa0@whatdoth|
| | eyknow.com> |
| | |
| | 06/05/2011 14:59 |
|---------+------------------------------------------->
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| |
| To: FOI requests at SLC <[SLC request email]> |
| cc: |
| Subject: Freedom of Information request - Applications from students with Discretionary Leave to |
| Remain |
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Dear Student Loans Company Limited,

I would like to know the following information in relation to
applications for student support for the academic years 2008/09,
2009/10 and 2010/11 from applicants who, although considered not to
qualify for recognition as refugees, were granted Discretionary
Leave to Remain in the UK or Discretionary Leave to Enter the UK.

1. The total number of applications for student support in each of
the academic years.

2. The number of applications granted for fee loans in each of the
academic years.

3. The number of applications granted for maintenance loans in each
of the academic years.

4. The number of applications for student support in each of the
academic years which were initially refused.

5. The number of applications for fee loans initially refused but
which were then successful following a reassessment upon receipt of
further evidence.

6. The number of applications for maintenance loans initially
refused but which were then successful following a reassessed upon
receipt of further evidence.

Yours faithfully,

James Lee
Policy Adviser
British Refugee Council
240 Ferndale Road
London
SW9 8BB

show quoted sections