Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of trends in the average time taken to process asylum applications.

The Home Office has a Service Standard to make an initial asylum decision within 182 days of the date of claim, which the Department has met for the last consecutive 39 months.

Despite this we are aware of the number of older cases in the system. These are more complex cases which generally have barriers that prevents an initial asylum decision being made. These barriers are often varied and require time to clear.

The Home Office is aware of the number of older cases and has plans in place to reduce the number of cases older than six months. These include a staff retention strategy to ensure it retains its highly skilled asylum decision makers, further expansion of digital processes to increase caseworking flexibility and the creation of a new team in Bootle which has been specifically established to tackle the older cases in the asylum system. This team has been designed to establish and roll out best practise in the management of older cases.