Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the current average waiting time is for an application for Discretionary Leave to Remain in the UK.

Please note there is no standalone application for Discretionary Leave: instead, Discretionary Leave is considered when an individual does not qualify for leave under the Immigration Rules or for Leave outside the Rules (LOTR) for Article 8 reasons. Discretionary Leave applies to those who provide evidence of exceptional compassionate circumstances or there are other compelling reasons to grant leave on a discretionary basis.

The Home Office publishes data on asylum in the ‘Immigration Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on those issued with Discretionary leave following an asylum application can be found in table Asy_D02 of the ‘asylum and resettlement detailed datasets’, and data on asylum applications awaiting a decision can be found in table Asy_D03. Information on how to use the datasets can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbooks.

Please note the data on applications awaiting a decision show a snapshot as at the last day of each quarter, rather than the number of asylum applications awaiting a decision over the entire quarter. The latest data relates to as at 30 June 2022. Data as at 30 September 2022 will be published on 24 November 2022.

Information on future Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the ‘Research and statistics calendar’.