What do they know FOI with Home office

[chowkal]

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ ... ing-646530

I have a feeling most of the staff are assinged to Border controls on passport valdiation on exit point.. Hope the FOI will reveal the information.
Similar to what they did last year on passports backlog

One more on home office. I'm sure they will learn form their mistakes and implement them for future with fee increase.

[secret.simon]

Having seen the FOI request, I doubt that most of the questions will be answered in any substantial manner.

FOI requests are designed to access documented information ,so typically statistics or policy decisions. They are not so good for asking questions that start with a "why". The questions should have been drafted to ask the basis of allocation of cases to case workers, for instance, rather than why March applications are being processed while February applications have not been decided.

My feeling is that the questions are so badly drafted that they can be avoided easily by the Home Office. But nonetheless it will be interesting to see what the Home Office answers.

[chowkal]

Agree Simon

I think they have three teams to process an application.

First it goes to a team that does fees debit, this happens for all, here services levels are strictly followed, as its income to HO
Second it goes to a team for background check
Third all successfull applications should gets assigned to a case worker, were I believe it is not straight forward, they pick and choose a few applications. And they keep jumping queue to next month applications, without clearing the backlog, just to meet their service levels

Thanks

[Siraj ud-Daulah]

Agree Simon

I think they have three teams to process an application.

First it goes to a team that does fees debit, this happens for all, here services levels are strictly followed, as its income to HO
Second it goes to a team for background check
Third all successfull applications should gets assigned to a case worker, were I believe it is not straight forward, they pick and choose a few applications. And they keep jumping queue to next month applications, without clearing the backlog, just to meet their service levels

Thanks

Hi Chowkal,

I think you are right. From what I have read and researched so far is that after the initial fee taken out, the applicants details are sent out to "third party" for security check. I have no idea on this, but presumably it is handed over to several different organisations such as MI6, Scotland Yard and other oversea agencies to carry out background check if there is any other records. Considering 8k-10k applicants per months, it is a immense amount of data gathering and then feeding it back to the case workers as you mentioned the last stage. If their databases do not give case workers enough information then case workers request them from applicants. Like you have said, even with enough information provided to case workers - due to the sheer volume of applicants they are forced to pick and choose. Home Office is severely short-staffed.

Totally agree with you as per jumping queue because of their SLA and it seems that applicants with shorter immigration history takes shorter time, if I have had the data I could had did a correlation.

I really wish they told us which stage our application is at the moment, instead of saying "Under consideration" or "Waiting". In essence they do it to cover the fact that even if someone's background check is done, may be it is not yet been picked up by a caseworker, but it's all an assumption.

[chowkal]

Siraj,
I don think there is going to be any transpaency on the way on how they handle applications. Also, I think there are NO process oOR AND procedure documents, even if they have one, they are not following it.

They are just following a check list amd putting tick marks to take decisions, that is second stage

Ta

[secret.simon]

I think there are NO process oOR AND procedure documents

They are just following a check list

That is a bit contradictory. Check lists are also a process document.

In any case, the FOI request does not seem to be drafted to get the information that you have raised in your previous question.

[imraniqbal2010]

Having seen the FOI request, I doubt that most of the questions will be answered in any substantial manner.

FOI requests are designed to access documented information ,so typically statistics or policy decisions. They are not so good for asking questions that start with a "why". The questions should have been drafted to ask the basis of allocation of cases to case workers, for instance, rather than why March applications are being processed while February applications have not been decided.

My feeling is that the questions are so badly drafted that they can be avoided easily by the Home Office. But nonetheless it will be interesting to see what the Home Office answers.

Simon if you think that these questions have been poorly drafted. Then why you dont take time to write in a professional way.
At least someone took time and made effort to inquire.
Its always easy to criticise then doing it yourself.

[Siraj ud-Daulah]

I actually think the questions are quite good, specially this one is spot on :

2) According to freedom of information stats some applications for
citizenship approved within 1 day processing time. How is that
possible that Home Office completed back home searches on them
within 1 day and got response back as well and approved within 1
day.

[secret.simon]

Simon if you think that these questions have been poorly drafted. Then why you dont take time to write in a professional way.
At least someone took time and made effort to inquire.
Its always easy to criticise then doing it yourself.

Because, as I said before

FOI requests are designed to access documented information ,so typically statistics or policy decisions. They are not so good for asking questions that start with a "why".

In order for me to redraft, firstly I would need to have the information that the OP makes sweeping assertions about, such as

2) According to freedom of information stats some applications for citizenship approved within 1 day processing time. How is that possible that Home Office completed back home searches on them within 1 day and got response back as well and approved within 1 day.

To redraft that question, I would need to know how many such applications were there, over a significant period of time. It would help if I could contrast details of such applications (were they single applicants with no families, as opposed to people with families, for instance?)

Secondly the questions would be drafted much more narrowly. So, no "why" questions, because they will not get any meaningful answers. Is that what the OP would want? I ask because most of his questions are "why" questions.

To ask such questions, one needs to approach one's MP and ask him to submit a question for written answer to the Home Office. An FOI request is the wrong way to do it.

FoI requests are not trivial matters. To use them effectively, one needs to have some understanding of what is and is not included.

And no, I'm not a lawyer or a legal advisor, just somebody who bothers to read the rules before taking action.

[secret.simon]

@Siraj ud-Daulah
I doubt the Home Office conducts "back home" checks. It does standard background checks, such as taxes, criminal and CCJ checks, etc. Only if something gets flagged in these matters would the Home Office then investigate further, I believe (I'm not certain)

This is conjecture. There is an outstanding FoI request for this information (what a surprise). However, a similar FoI request in 2012 was refused by the Home Office.

On a lighter note, your choice of username is quite interesting. Do I detect a faint hint of irony?

[badratio]

I reckon Home Office will decline to answer simply because you've asked too many questions as it might exceed £600 cost limit specified in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

To put it in plain English - you've requested too much information in one go.

Under section 12 of the Act, the Home Office is not obliged to comply with an information
request where to do so would exceed the cost limit.

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
and preparing the response can be included in the costs for these purposes.

[Siraj ud-Daulah]

@Siraj ud-Daulah
I doubt the Home Office conducts "back home" checks. It does standard background checks, such as taxes, criminal and CCJ checks, etc. Only if something gets flagged in these matters would the Home Office then investigate further, I believe (I'm not certain)

This is conjecture. There is an outstanding FoI request for this information (what a surprise). However, a similar FoI request in 2012 was refused by the Home Office.

On a lighter note, your choice of username is quite interesting. Do I detect a faint hint of irony?

@Simon,

You may or may not be aware that since last December there has been significant number changes made to the checks and follow up procedures by the Home Office - after an ex convict became British and news came out in the paper which put them under immense scrutiny.

I quite like to presume that before these changes were made the Home Office barely used to follow correct protocol to conduct background checks, but now it is a very different story. The updated list is inclusive of pre-immigration history and many others such as 10 years ban on suspicion or deception etc.

To put it in context these changes merely reflect on the actual dynamics of the layer of checks that still carried out, as it would be almost impossible to comprehend for each applicant with their criminal record from the country of origin (back home).

Said that, I'm almost certain that Home Office is more than likely to carry them out but to what extent or to what degree of applicants credibility is beyond my knowledge.

I do completely agreeing with you as per the FOI - they are only as good as statistical analysis and nothing more. The technical difficultly of each case would not be reflecting on FOI and engaging MP to further involvement may or may not help from what I've read up on here so far.

Thanks for looking up my username, indeed it was created with a tongue in cheek and it didn't stay as a secret for much long

[waiz89k]

@siraj

HO is highly unlikely to do checks from back home until unless it is got to do with some war crimes or some other serious offences if flagged or self declared.

Inspector John Vine has suggested HO to ask applicant to produce Criminal Record Disclosure from his/her home country, which is going to be the responsibility of the applicant to produce the certificate/disclosure. Like if applying from Ireland for naturalisation one has to produce local police report(I guess).
Like if applying for SIA license one has to produce a criminal record certificate from back home.

So I dont think so its happening at the moment, even if HO starts they wont do it themselves they will ask applicant to produce it.

Please have a read at the following response from HO to the john vine's suggestion.

" 4. Requires applicants for naturalisation to produce criminal records disclosure from
overseas where these are available.
4.1 Accepted in part
4.2 As the report acknowledges all applicants are checked against the Police National
Computer (PNC) here in the UK.
4.3 We recognise the need to increase scrutiny of criminality self-declarations provided by
applicants. The Home Office will look at options initially to verify a sample of self-declared
offences using existing international data sharing mechanisms and consider whether to
test a requirement on applicants to provide a certificate or certificates from other
countries to outline any criminal history. "

[waiz89k]

look at this, In May 2014 HO received 7410 applications and till 31 Dec 2014, there r 2470 applications still pending, which is over 33%. no words to describe this BS.

May 2014
More than 33% pending

June 2014
More than 37% pending.

July 2014
More than 33% pending.

Aug 2014
More than 33% pending

Sep 2014
More than 35% pending

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ ... sponse.pdf


How the hell HO is claiming that they r completing 99% applications within 6 months??????

[secret.simon]

@waiz89k
Thank you for elucidating my point of view regarding background checks. The outcome of John Vine's last report was certainly quite negative for people applying for naturalisation.

As regards the statistics and assertion of 99% in six months that you have quoted, can you provide a link to the source of those statistics and statement?

[Siraj ud-Daulah]

@waiz89k

Thank you so much for clearing that one up. Apologies as it was only my blind assumption. Those numbers are ridiculously high and no way near the 99% completion claimed by the Home Office. I will be patching those figures through to my local MP along with my next complaint letter.

@Simon

I believe this is the original link to that FOI:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ ... ing-633869

Guys, just a thought - unless the Home Office means they finish 99% of "straightforward" cases and half of the applications are not straightforward, there's no way they could justify that claim, surely?

[waiz89k]

@waiz89k
Thank you for elucidating my point of view regarding background checks. The outcome of John Vine's last report was certainly quite negative for people applying for naturalisation.

As regards the statistics and assertion of 99% in six months that you have quoted, can you provide a link to the source of those statistics and statement?

Thanks Siraj

@simon

Siraj has mentioned the correct source of the statistics.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ ... ing-633869

and source of the statement is below which says the following.

" 3) How long will they stay at HM passport office to deal with their backlog?
Naturalisation staff were deployed to HMPO on Friday 13 July and after a phased return the
last of them returned on Monday 1 September. Whilst naturalisation trained staff were assisting
HMPO, there was no negative impact on service standards with 99% of naturalisation
applications being decided within the 6 month target during this period."

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ ... aseworkers

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ ... %20cpc.pdf

[imraniqbal2010]

Here is the responce from HO
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ ... 9.pdf.html