Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, for each year since 2010, (1) how many staff have supported the Voluntary Returns Service, (2) how much the service has cost, and (3) how many complaints about the service were received.

Data on the number of voluntary returns is published quarterly at table Ret_01 of the returns summary dataset, which is attached. Data on voluntary returns are subject to upward revision, so comparisons over time should be made with caution. In some cases, individuals who have been told to leave the UK will not notify the Home Office of their departure from the UK. In such cases, it can take some time for the Home Office to become aware of such a departure and update the system. As a result, data for more recent periods will initially undercount the total number of returns. ‘Other verified returns’ are particularly affected by this.

Information requested which is not contained within this published data is not routinely captured. To capture numbers would require a manual trawl of data and to do so would incur disproportionate cost.