Dear Home Office,

I hope this finds you well. I am seeking detailed information regarding the number and type of allegations of immigration law violations received by the Home Office over the last 5-year period. I assume this information is held by the Home Office, as improved record-keeping regarding allegations was a key recommendation in a 2011 report by the then Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency, ahead of the introduction of the Intelligence Management System (IMS).

I am seeking quarterly figures for allegations about unlawful activity relating to immigration rules received by the Home Office since the introduction of the IMS in September 2012 up until the most recent figures held at 11/08/2017.

For each quarter, please supply:

1) the total number of pieces of information supplied to the Home Office, of which:
a) the number of Section 24 reports submitted by registrars relating to suspected sham marriages
b) the number of reports submitted by DVLA officials
c) the number of reports submitted by members of the public without a statutory reporting obligation (this could include landlords or business owners before the introduction of legislation that made reporting obligatory)

2) the number of enforcement visit arrests linked to information supplied, of which:
a) the number that ascertained that the individual/s involved had valid leave to remain (of these cases, please specify what category of leave the individual was found to have)
3) the number of subsequent removals
4) the number of subsequent detentions
5) the number of subsequent prosecutions

For each quarter, please also disclose the proportion of allegations found to be un-actionable.

I understand that this is a lot of detailed information, but hope that the request is laid out sufficiently clearly. Please do not hesitate to get in touch should anything require a clarification before proceeding.

Very best, I look forward to hearing from you,

Mary Atkinson

Dear Immigration Enforcement Secretariat,

Thank you so much for your reply, I really appreciate you getting back to me and the work put in. Apologies for my own delayed response, as I have been in communication with the Migration Transparency statistics team.

1) In your response of 31/08/17, you stated in your answer to question 1) that statistics detailing information received is published by quarter "under the transparency data publications." Thank you for pointing me in the direction of this data - however, the data does not cover the whole period in question, as the website only dates back to May 2014. I have checked with the Migration Transparency statistics team, who confirmed to me that they do not hold data covering the period between September 2012 and May 2014. As such, please kindly supply data as to the number of allegations (or "pieces of information") received by quarter over the course of that period.

2) Additionally, in response to the data kindly supplied on non-actionable cases (where “action” is taken to mean “enforcement action”), I would like to seek additional clarification as follows:

Of non-actionable cases for each quarter of the period in question:
a) The number found to be based on false or unfounded information (whether these are two separate categories or one integrated category)
b) The number where insufficient information was supplied
c) The number found to be a duplicate of information already supplied
d) The number found to relate to (an) individual/s found to have leave to remain. In this case, please specify the type of leave to remain the individual/s in question was found to have. If this data is not available for all cases, please supply that which exists
e) The number found to be non-actionable for other reasons, and what these were listed as

Please let me know if it would be preferable to launch a new FOI request in relation to part 2) of the current response, and I will be happy to do so.

Many thanks, sincerely,
Mary Atkinson

Dear Immigration Enforcement FOI PQ,

Many thanks for your response dated 17/10/2017, I very much appreciate the hard work that has gone into responding to this request.

Thank you for your comprehensive response as to the reasons for which allegations were found to be unactionable. In your response to my question 2d), which requested information as to what type of leave to remain subjects of allegations where found to have (where it existed), you said it would not be possible to respond as the database matching required would make responding to the request in reference to the specified period too costly.

Therefore, I would like to request the same information for a shorter time-frame. Please, then, supply figures relating to the year 2013 (all four quarters), specifying what type of leave to remain the subjects of immigration violation allegations were found to have, where such existed.

In addition, I would be very grateful if you could confirm that the "no offence" category listed in your response relates to individuals found to have some form of leave to remain in the UK.

Yours sincerely,

Mary Atkinson