Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average time taken is between the submission of an application seeking asylum and her Department's initial decision.

The Home Office is unable to state what the average time taken is between the submission of an application seeking asylum and her department’s initial decision as the Home Office does not publish this information and to do so would incur disproportionate cost.

However, the Home Office does publish data on the number asylum applications awaiting an initial decision by duration, for main applicants only. Available breakdowns include whether cases have been waiting less or more than 6 months. This data can be found at Asy_D03 of the asylum and resettlement detailed datasets:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/asylum-and-resettlement-datasets