Resettlement Operations
www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk
14th Floor
Lunar House
Croydon
CR9 2BY
Bill Short
18 December 2015
Dear Mr Short
FOI 37284
Thank you for your e-mail of 27 October 2015, in which you ask for information relating to Syrian
refugees in Northumberland. I offer my sincere apologies, as you have not, until now had a
substantive reply to your request. Your correspondence has been handled as a request for
information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Specifically you asked for;
1. An indication if any plans exist to place Syrian refugees in Northumberland,
2. If no plans exist, what plans are there and at what date will plans be developed,
3. When will a distribution plan be formed for refugees across English counties or county
councils.
I can confirm that the Home Office holds the information that you have requested. However, after
careful consideration we have decided that the information is exempt from disclosure under section
40 of the Freedom of Information Act. This provides that information can be withheld if it constitutes
personal data.
Our reasons for not disclosing the information are set out in the attached
Annex A. If you are dissatisfied with this response you may request an independent internal review of our
handling of your request by submitting a complaint within two months to the address below,
quoting reference 37284. If you ask for an internal review, it would be helpful if you could say why
you are dissatisfied with the response.
Information Rights Team
UK Visas and Immigration is an operational command of the Home Office
Home Office
Third Floor, Peel Building
2 Marsham Street
London SW1P 4DF
e-mail
: xxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xxx.xx
As part of any internal review the Department's handling of your information request will be
reassessed by staff who were not involved in providing you with this response. If you remain
dissatisfied after this internal review, you would have a right of complaint to the Information
Commissioner as established by section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act.
Yours sincerely
Cheryl Pellew
Resettlement Manager
Annex A
1. An indication if any plans exist to place Syrian refugees in Northumberland,
2. If no plans exist, what plans are there and at what date will plans be developed,
3. When will a distribution plan be formed for refugees across English counties or
county councils.
40 - Personal information
Explanation of exemption
Section 40 provides that:
(1)Any information to which a request for information relates is exempt information if it constitutes
personal data of which the applicant is the data subject.
(2)Any information to which a request for information relates is also exempt information if—
(a)it constitutes personal data which do not fall within subsection (1), and
(b)either the first or the second condition below is satisfied.
(3)The first condition is—
(a)in a case where the information falls within any of paragraphs (a) to (d) of the definition of “data”
in section 1(1) of the M1Data Protection Act 1998, that the disclosure of the information to a
member of the public otherwise than under this Act would contravene—
(i)any of the data protection principles, or
(ii)section 10 of that Act (right to prevent processing likely to cause damage or distress), and
(b)in any other case, that the disclosure of the information to a member of the public otherwise
than under this Act would contravene any of the data protection principles if the exemptions in
section 33A(1) of the M2Data Protection Act 1998 (which relate to manual data held by public
authorities) were disregarded.
Any information to which a request for information relates is exempt information if it constitutes
personal data of which the applicant is the data subject.
The Home Office has obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998 and in law generally to
protect personal data. We have concluded that the information you have requested is exempt from
disclosure under section 40.
Refugees that we are bringing to the United Kingdom are very vulnerable people. Our prime
concern is their safety and protection as they arrive in this country. We believe that the best way to
protect their privacy and ensure their recovery and integration is to limit the amount of information
about them that we make publicly available.
We do not disclose the details of where refugees will be resettled upon arrival in the UK under the
Government resettlement scheme.
