To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to reduce the backlog of asylum applications.
Answered on
10 November 2021
The asylum system has been under pressure for several years, but this has been exacerbated by the global pandemic. At the start of the COVID outbreak, whilst intake reduced, so did interview options and decision making capacity. We put in place recovery plans and continue to develop these in light of recent intake.
The Home Office is pursuing a programme of transformation and business improvement initiatives which will speed up decision making, reduce the time people spend in the system and reduce the numbers who are awaiting an interview or decision. This includes almost doubling decision makers number to c.1,000 and providing improved training and career progression opportunities to aid retention of staff. This investment in our people will speed up processing times and increase the throughput of asylum decisions.
We are continuing to develop existing and new technology to help build on recent improvements such as digital interviewing and move away from a paper-based system. We are streamlining and digitalising the case working process to enable more effective workflow, appointment booking and decision-making.