Asylum: Housing

(asked on 8th December 2022) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent progress her Department has made on implementing the (a) Asylum Accommodation and Support Transformation programme and (b) PACE pilot in Scotland.


Answered by
Robert Jenrick Portrait
Robert Jenrick
This question was answered on 13th December 2022

a - Asylum Accommodation and Support Transformation programme – The Home Office are looking to implement delivery plans in conjunction with our providers and Local Authorities to further support full dispersal.

b - PACE pilot in Scotland – As part of the Home Office Asylum Transformation programme, we are taking immediate action to bring the asylum backlog down with the nationwide rollout of a successful casework Pilot from Leeds. The aim of this is to improve asylum initial decision-making productivity, focussing on streamlining the decision-making process and reducing the time it takes to interview, consider and serve an asylum decision through a number of process improvements. The rollout of the PACE pilot to all Home Office sites is due to be complete by May 2023 and we will roll out the approach to our operational sites over the coming months.

To further accelerate decision making we will further drive productivity improvements by simplifying and modernising our system. This includes measures like shortening interviews, removing unnecessary interviews, making guidance simpler and more accessible, dealing with cases more swiftly where they can be certified as manifestly unfounded and recruiting extra decision makers.

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