Dear Home Office,

Please provide the number of human trafficking victims (with positive conclusive grounds decisions) or potential human trafficking victims (with positive reasonable grounds decisions) who were held in short-term holding facilities (STHF) or Her Majesty's Prisons under immigration powers.

Please provide both figures separately, accounting for the years 2017 and 2018 also as two separate figures.

Yours faithfully,
M Esslemont

Dear team,

Please note that a response to this request is now outstanding by three working days. I wish to begin an internal review of this request (ref 54368).

Yours sincerely,
M Esslemont

Dear N McKenzie,

Thank you for your clarification. Please kindly provide a revised deadline by which I can expect a response.

Yours sincerely,

M Esslemont

Dear N Mckenzie,

Thank you for chasing. The case reference is 54368.

Yours sincerely,
M Esslemont

Dear FOI Requests,

I am writing in light of the week-long delay to answering case number 54368, in which I ask for the number of trafficking victims held in short-term holding facilities and prisons.

A response to this request is now significantly late, and I have not been provided an adequate time-frame by which to expect further correspondence. As a result, I am repeating my request for an internal review.

Please note that the nature of my complaint is centered on the delay in providing information, rather than the eventual quality of response, so delaying the process until request completion will not yield any additional basis for a review.

Yours sincerely,
M Esslemont

Dear Home Office,

Thank you for confirming that the delayed FOI case, ref 54368, is under active consideration. In this response, you state the Policy Area is unable to provide a revised timeframe by which to expect a response to this request. This request is a month late.

It is reasonable for the Information Team to liaise with the Policy Area working on this response to relay the reasons for this delay, which is now over a month long. Why has this request not been fulfilled despite considerable additional time and, now, consideration as part of both a time complaint to the Home Office and Information Commissioner’s Office?

Yours faithfully,
M Esslemont

Dear Home Office,

I am writing pursuant to FOI ref 54368, in which a response should have been provided on 27th July.
I requested the number of trafficking victims held in Short Term Holding Facilities and prisons, and have yet to receive a revised date by which to expect a response.

Regards
M Esslemont

Dear FOI Requests,

Please note that this request (case ref 54368) is nearly two months late, despite raising this delay with both the ICO and as part of an internal time complaint.

Please provide a timeframe by which I can expect a response.

Yours sincerely,
M Esslemont

Dear FOI Requests,

Please note that you are now in breach of the 10-day deadline set by the Information Commissioner's Office, by which time you were ordered to provide a response to the query you originally acknowledged but did not answer (case ref 54368). The ICO order (case ref FS50866359) is now outstanding by three working days, whilst the total delay in answering the original request now rests at 58 days.

Please provide a response to this inquiry.

Yours sincerely,
M Esslemont

Dear Home Office,

I wish to request an internal review of case ref 54638, in which I ask for the number of individuals with positive Reasonable and Conclusive Grounds decisions at their last NRM decision and, as a second stipulation, the number of these who were held in prisons or short-term holding facilities between the period of 1 January 2017- 31 December 2018. I asked for this data to be represented as two annual figures.

This reply was significantly delayed - subject to a decision notice by the ICO - and has failed to satisfy the original request. As a result of the exclusion of individuals detained in the first calendar year of July 2017, the exclusion of trafficking victims whose most recent NRM decision has taken place after the detention period, and the three-month delay in providing a response, I wish to request a review of the handling of this case.

In your response (Annex A) you have restricted data to only include individuals whose trafficking decision and detention period(s) took place within mid-2017 and 2018. I believe the phrasing of my question makes it clear that the data requested is of individuals with certain NRM outcomes (non-date specific) and their detention (date-specific):

"Please provide the number of human trafficking victims (with positive conclusive grounds decisions) or potential human trafficking victims (with positive reasonable grounds decisions) who were held in short-term holding facilities (STHF) or Her Majesty's Prisons under immigration powers." [2 July 2019, case ref 54638]

I believe from the use of tense phrasing in this request, it is clear that the time period of the NRM decision is not time-restricted, whereas the time spent in detention is limited to a specific period. As a result, your response should include individuals for whom detention took place in STHF or HMPs between 2017 - 2018, but whose NRM decision may have taken place after detention. Based on the footnotes of your response, it seems as if NRM cases resolved after 2018 have not been included even if this satisfied the original request:

"Please note the figures show the individual's latest case outcome before the end of detention or the end of the period where the detention continues into multiple years."

Furthermore, I request a review in order to understand the reasons for further restricting my request to the period between July 2017-2018, when I asked for information on the period between 1 January 2017 - 31 December 2018. It is stated in the footnotes that "data on the detention of immigration detainees in prisons is only available since July 2017". The National Offender Management System (NOMS) and Home Office has shared a memorandum of understanding on data sharing long before 2017 for routine reporting. No indication is given as to changes in management data which would explain a reporting reform that took place in July 2017, so I believe this assertion was made in error.

Please provide the number of trafficking victims detained between 1 January 2017 - 31 December 2018 in HMPs and STHFs, with NRM decisions issued at any time before, during or after their detention under Immigration Powers as part of a response to my internal review. A fresh complaint to the ICO will be rescinded on the provision of this information, represented as annually as per my original request.

Kind regards,
M Esslemont

Dear FOI Requests,

Please note that your response to internal review, case ref 54368, is now delayed by 28 working days. As a result, the ICO has been notified.

Please provide a revised time frame by which I can expect a response to my request for internal review, which is now significantly delayed.

Yours sincerely,
M Esslemont

Dear Home Office,

Please note that case ref 54368 is now significantly delayed, beyond both the statutory 20 working day limit and the expanded 40 day wait outlined as per your discretion. Please provide me with a revised time frame by which I can expect a response.

Yours faithfully,

M Esslemont