Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what training is given to Asylum Decision Makers.

Asylum Operations remain committed to the training and upskilling of our staff. It can take up to 12 months for a decision maker to become fully proficient in all areas of their work. We have a comprehensive training programme and mentoring framework in place to support this delivered by a dedicated team of senior grade trainers and higher-grade technical experts. This helps with maintaining case-working expertise and improving decision-maker capability as part of our plan for a highly skilled workforce.

During the first 9 weeks of a decision-maker being in post, there is a mixture of classroom based and on the job coaching that is a foundation for ongoing learning and coaching.

Once the decision maker fully moves into the live operational environment and throughout their development period, they work within a mentoring framework and receive the support of Team Leaders, Technical Specialists and consolidators (experienced decision makers who are assigned to support new starters) as they grow their skills and to ensure quality is maintained.

Alongside the foundation training programme, a range of other bespoke and more specialist technical training is available to decision makers.

Recently a comprehensive Training Plan on the provisions introduced by the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 was developed. A one-day training package was rolled out to all Decision Makers from Legacy, Flow, and Children and Secondary Casework units.