Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum seekers had been waiting for an initial decision on their asylum application for more than one year at the end of (a) 2011, (b) 2012 and (c) 2013.

At the end of December 2011, 1,897 asylum applications from main applicants were pending an initial decision after 12 months, 2,561 at the end of December 2012 and 3,773 at the end of December 2013.

The figures provided are a subset of latest published statistics for applications received for asylum since April 2006 which are published by the Home Office on a monthly and quarterly basis.

The latest release Immigration Statistics January to March 2014 is available from:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-january-to-march-2014
and from the Library of the House. Asylum data tables (volume 1) are available from:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/311790
/asylum1-q1-2014-tabs.ods

Our aim this year is to ensure all claims made before April 2014 have an asylum decision by 31 March 2015. Furthermore, we are endeavouring to ensure all new claims received since 1st April 2014 get a decision within the 6 months service standard.

We are raising our decision-maker productivity targets in order to deal with rising intake, and we are continually recruiting new caseworkers to maintain appropriate staffing levels and to support our aim to get within service standards by the end of the 2014/2015 period.