BID's legal casework now indicates that staff employed by Capita Business Services have ‘ownership’ of a cohort of detained cases. BID clients have received letters to that effect signed by ‘Capita Detained Casework Team, on behalf of the Home Office’, based at the Home Office National Removals Centre at Solihull.
The work currently being carried out by Capita Business Services, under contract to the Home Office, on the migrant refusal pool has been outlined elsewhere. We were naturally curious to find out precisely what work Capita employees were doing on detained cases, and what decision making powers they had been granted.
We have now been told by the Home Office that Capita Business Services staff deal with the more routine and non-urgent work. They are not Executive Officer grade but rather Administrative Officer grade in relation to their decision-making powers.
Members of the Capita Detained Casework Team do not respond to pre-action letters or any aspect of a detained case once removal directions have been served. They do not work on deportation matters, and “make no recommendations in any regard in relation to substantive cases”.
The table below gives some idea of the scope and nature of the current involvement of Capita staff in detained casework on behalf of the Home Office.
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Seeking authority to maintain detention (detention reviews, refusals of requests for release on Temporary Admission, CIO bail, or otherwise). Drafting of bail summaries following an application for FTT bail. Preparation of removal directions. |
Capita staff prepare the administrative functions of the case but don’t make the decision. They don’t make decisions to detain, they do the work necessary prior to the case coming to the detained caseowner. They provide advice to the SSHD who considers that advice with access to the full file. Capita then communicate the decision to the individual. |
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Submission of applications for an emergency travel document (ETD) through a document liaison officer (DLO) |
Capita staff only process cases where removal on EU letter is possible. This may change in the future. |
| Criminal Casework |
Capita staff don’t work on the cases of ‘criteria criminals’ (someone with a custodial sentence of 12 months or more). But they would work on cases where the detainee has a conviction and a custodial sentence of less than one year or some other disposal such as a parking ticket. |
| Separated family casework |
Capita staff must refer to Assistant Director level after a review by civil servants and with reference to the Office of the Children’s Champion. They apparently deal with “straightforward” cases only. |
| Rule 35 reviews |
Capita staff work on these but their work must be signed off by a civil servant. |
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Recording of data on CID and other Home Office databases. |
Capita staff have full access to CID, with training and clearances. |
