Asked by: Imran Hussain (Labour - Bradford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how HM Passport Office staff decide whether to apply additional checks on passport applications.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
On 25 April 2013 the Secretary of State for the Home Department outlined the terms under which passports would be issued, withdrawn and refused by written ministerial statement. Each case is assessed against this and will be dependent upon a number of factors including the information in the application, previous applications, supporting documents or other information obtained as part of the assessment of the application.
Asked by: Imran Hussain (Labour - Bradford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 5 March 2019 to Question 225536, what the average length of time is for HM Passport Office to process passport applications from people from a BME background.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
Her Majesty’s Passport Office does not require data on ethnicity to be provided as part of the passport application process, and therefore no statistical information is held.
Asked by: Imran Hussain (Labour - Bradford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average length of time is for HM Passport Office to process passport applications.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The table below show the median average processing time in working days for passport applications:
Year | UK | International |
2018 | 4.0 | 4.7 |
For paper applications, the processing time starts on receipt of the application form. Online applications commence on receipt of the signed declaration or supporting documents, depending upon the service used.
Passport processing ends at the point that a passport is printed, and does not include the time taken for delivery.
Asked by: Imran Hussain (Labour - Bradford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that refugees in the Kutupalong Refugee Camp in Bangladesh who are eligible to apply for leave to remain in the UK are able to access the (a) identity and (b) health checks required for that application process.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
Visa Application Centres and approved medical screening centres in Dhaka and Sylhet provide applicants with facilities to provide the required information for visa applications.
The Government of Bangladesh does not currently permit refugees living in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar to leave the camps either for the purpose of making a visa application or to leave Bangladesh to travel to a third country.
The British High Commission has raised this issue with the Government of Bangladesh, but the Government of Bangladesh position remains unchanged.
Asked by: Imran Hussain (Labour - Bradford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum seekers reside in (a) the UK and (b) the North East, Yorkshire and Humber region.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The Home Office publishes quarterly figures on the number of asylum seekers housed in dispersed accommodation, including under Section 95, by local authority in the Immigration Statistics release, in table as_16q and 17q in volume 4 of the Asylum data tables. These are available at:
This does not include those asylum seekers who are accommodated with friends and family, and who are not in receipt of support.
Asked by: Imran Hussain (Labour - Bradford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many properties are currently maintained as part of the existing asylum accommodation and support contracts in the North East, Yorkshire and Humber region.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The Home Office publishes quarterly figures on the number of asylum seekers housed in dispersed accommodation, including under Section 95, by local authority in the Immigration Statistics release, in table as_16q and 17q in volume 4 of the Asylum data tables. These are available at:
This does not include those asylum seekers who are accommodated with friends and family, and who are not in receipt of support.
Asked by: Imran Hussain (Labour - Bradford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum seekers his Department plans to accommodate in the North East, Yorkshire and Humber region under the new asylum accommodation and support contracts in each year from the commencement of those contracts.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
To continue to meet UKVI’s obligation to provide accommodation & support to destitute asylum seekers, the Asylum Accommodation and Support Transformation (AAST) project has been established to design, develop and procure the future model for asylum accommodation and support, replacing the existing COMPASS arrangements when they expire in Sept 2019.
UKVI cannot predict the number of asylum seekers who will need accommodation as intake is volatile and subject to change. However dispersal across the UK is carefully managed by the Home Office to ensure the best outcomes for asylum seekers and their host communities. We will continue to work with stakeholders within the existing and new contracting arrangements to manage and refine our dispersal arrangements.
Asked by: Imran Hussain (Labour - Bradford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will publish the information his Department has produced on why it was not possible to award the new asylum accommodation and support contracts under the original procurement exercise.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The Home Office published the Asylum Accommodation and Support Contract (AASC) contract notice launched in December 2017 and following the launch of the AASC procurement, compliant bids that met the minimum requirements were not received for two regions; North East, Yorkshire and Humberside and Northern Ireland.
Details of non-compliant bids are not disclosable due to commercial sensitivities.
Asked by: Imran Hussain (Labour - Bradford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department has taken to ensure that asylum seekers accommodated as part of the asylum accommodation and support contracts are not placed in shared bedrooms with non-family members.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The forthcoming Asylum Accommodation and Support Contracts will permit the use of room sharing for some service users, providing it complies with the strict criteria set out in the contracts Statement of Requirements. This includes compliance relevant national and local housing regulations including any advice from social services and primary and secondary care bodies on whether room sharing is inappropriate for individual cases.
In addition, Providers will be continue to be required to ensure that they take into account a service users individual characteristics and provide them with appropriate accommodation reflective of any changing needs, including adherence to religious practice.
Asked by: Imran Hussain (Labour - Bradford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment he has made of adequacy of the nine-month timescale for the (a) mobilisation of and (b) transition to the new asylum accommodation and support contracts.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
The Home Office has designed the project to replace the current asylum accommodation and support services so as to ensure a smooth transition of services from one Provider to another.
The timetable allows eight months for mobilisation and transition activities, which is similar to the time that such activity took when the current contracts came into operation. The Asylum Accommodation and Support Contract(AASC) mobilisation transition plans have also built on a number of other lessons, including the creation of a team with suitable experience, expertise and understanding of the new contracts and the early engagement with enabling functions from across the Home Office to plan out the demands that will be placed on them.
As we move to the mobilisation phase we will increase our engagement with Local Authorities, where my officials will be happy to discuss and address any concerns that Local Authorities have with the transition plans.