Freedom of Information
Central Correspondence Team
Central Operations
PO Box 3468
Sheffield
S3 8WA
Dave Amor
Email:
Email: request-625025-
xxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx
www.gov.uk/ukvi
FOI Reference: 56762
31 December 2019
Dear Mr Amor
Thank you for your enquiry of 4 December in which you requested information on
Tier 4 visas. Your request has been handled as a request for information under the
Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Information Requested
1> Tier 4 Student Visa data by Sponsor Organization with visa issued > 5 Per year .
Additionally share the Length of stay allowed categorized by Length of course ("Less
than six months", "Six months or more, but less than 12 months","12 months or more").
Additionally share the NQF level of programme of study.
2> Tier 4 Student Visa data for nationality of student (partial
2> information is shared via FOI Reference: 33564) additionally split by
2> approved and denied/ rejected status
3> Tier 4 Student Visa data for freshly issued visa vs extended visa in
3> the year 2018
Response
Regarding question 1, under section 12(1)
of the Act, the Home Office is not obliged
to comply with an information request where to do so would exceed the cost limit.
UK Visas and Immigration is an operational command of the Home Office
We have estimated that the cost of meeting your request would exceed the cost limit
of £600 specified in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate
Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. We are therefore unable to comply with it. To
identify the data you have requested from our visa system would require a manual
search through applications and a cross referencing exercise with the Tier 4
sponsorship database.
The £600 limit is based on work being carried out at a rate of £25 per hour, which
equates to 24 hours of work per request. The cost of locating, retrieving and
extracting information can be included in the costs for these purposes. The costs do
not include considering whether any information is exempt from disclosure,
overheads such as heating or lighting, or items such as photocopying or postage.
If you refine your request, so that it is more likely to fall under the cost limit, we will
consider it again however, any request involving a manual search or cross
referencing of reports is likely to exceed the cost limit regardless of how it is refined.
Please note that if you simply break your request down into a series of similar
smaller requests, we might still decline to answer it if the total cost exceeds £600.
Even if a revised request were to fall within the cost limit, it is possible that other
exemptions in the Act might apply.
I confirm that the Home Office holds the information which you have requested in
questions 2 & 3. However, we believe that the information is already reasonably
accessible to you. It can be found at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/managed-migration-datasets
Section 21(1) of the FOIA exempts the Home Office from having to provide you with
this information, because it is already reasonably accessible to you. If you have any
difficulties in accessing this information at the source which I have indicated, please
contact me again.
For question 2, the relevant data can be found in Vis_D01 (Applications for entry
clearance visas) and Vis_D02 (Outcomes of entry clearance visa applications) in the
entry clearance spreadsheet.
For question 3, ‘freshly issued’ visas are the same as question 2 (entry clearance
spreadsheet) and extensions are contained in the extensions spreadsheet (containing
Exe_D01 and Exe_D02).
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
xxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx, quoting reference 56762. If you ask for an
internal review, it would be helpful if you could say why you are dissatisfied with the
response.
As part of any internal review the Department's handling of your information request
will be reassessed by staff 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
J Slater
Central Operations
We value your feedback, please use the link below to access a brief anonymous
survey to help us improve our service to you:
http://www.homeofficesurveys.homeoffice.gov.uk/s/108105TAZNG