It continues to focus on what are termed “Disputed Statelessness Cases”. It directs that these should be treated in the same way as “Disputed Nationality Cases”. In particular, it states that: “In instances where the UK Border Agency disbelieves the applicant’s assertion that they are stateless, but cannot be satisfied on the basis of all the available documentary and oral evidence that the applicant is a national of a country other than the country in which they were formerly habitually resident, only the country in which they were formerly habitually resident should be specified. In such cases officers should take particular care to thoroughly investigate the evidence of statelessness/nationality at interview so that wherever possible the UK Border Agency can rebut their claim to be stateless.” There is further guidance on how a nationality should be identified in correspondence with the applicant in “Disputed Statelessness Cases”. It provides that alongside an applicant’s name, the fact that the applicant claims to be stateless should be identified, as well as the nationality that the UK Border Agency believes the applicant to have.186 Caseworkers are guided to update CID records in disputed statelessness cases in the following way: “An applicant’s nationality should only be recorded as Stateless on CID where the applicant has produced a Convention document which defines them as Stateless under the 1951 or 1954 Convention. In all other cases, their claim to be Stateless should only be recorded in ‘Person notes’. Should the applicant be considered to be Stateless following consideration of the claim, officers should amend CID to reflect this.”187 Given that statelessness is recognised rather than granted,188 it is a matter of concern that the current guidance on disputed statelessness cases requires an individual to present with a stateless person travel document (or subsequently to be issued with one) in order to have their statelessness recorded in the nationality field on CID. Although this guidance should only be applied to a defined group of cases, if it were applied broadly it would limit the UK Border Agency’s ability to collect accurate data about the number of stateless persons on UK territory. Moreover, from the participants’ CID records it emerged that in 22 of the 36 files reviewed the guidance had either been followed only partially or not at all, as illustrated in more detail in section 4.6.1 on screening and early identification. These seemingly common recording and data entry problems appear to have hindered the proper consideration of nationality and/or statelessness issues as the cases progressed. Anecdotal evidence from interviews with the UK Border Agency also confirmed this pattern.189 A further limitation with the guidance is that no explicit reference is made to the 1954 Statelessness Convention and no direction is given on how to properly identify statelessness. This is compounded by an apparent lack of comprehensive training on statelessness for 80 186 Ibid., Section 7. 187 Ibid., Section 7.1. 188 UNHCR, Geneva Summary Conclusions, para. 21. 189 Anecdotal information from semi-structured interviews with the NAM+ Training Team (19 July 2011), a UKBA Senior Asylum Caseworker (15 August 2011), the Quality Audit Team (1 August 2011) the Asylum Screening Unit (15 August 2011). The UKBA travel document team (9 August 2011) and the Nationality Directorate (1 August 2011). Mapping statelessness