More than 175,000 asylum seekers are waiting for an initial decision on their application, a record high, newly released Home Office statistics have shown, as Labour described the situation as “complete chaos”.
Charities said the backlog came at enormous human cost. The Refugee Council said the delays were “having a devastating impact on the people we work with, whose lives are put on hold indefinitely while they anxiously wait to hear whether they will be allowed to stay in the UK”.
Data on asylum cases for the year to the end of June showed that while the number of people given a decision rose against the year before, this was more than cancelled out by a bigger increase in applications.
Almost 10,000 Afghans applied for asylum over the year, making them the second most common nationality entering the UK asylum system after Albanians.
The statistics showed there were 78,768 asylum applications to the UK in the year to June 2023, concerning 97,390 people, up from 66,384 applications in the previous 12 months.
This rise helped push the total number of people awaiting an initial decision on their claim to 175,457, 44% higher than the 122,213 total at the end of June 2022, and the highest figure since records began in 2010.
There was a 57% increase in the number of people waiting more than six months for a decision, rising to 139,961 at the end of June from 89,231 a year before.
Thus far in 2023, 19,174 people have arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel on small boats, other Home Office figures showed.
Of the 11,790 asylum applications by Albanian nationals in the year to the end of June, 7,557 came from arrivals on boats crossing the Channel, the data showed, although the numbers of Albanians coming on small boats dropped notably this year compared with 2022.
The number of Afghan nationals applying almost doubled over the year, from 5,154 in the year to the end of June 2022 to 9,964 12 months later.
The total number of initial decisions for the year was 23,702, notably higher than the 14,730 in the year to June 2022, with 71% giving refugee status, humanitarian protection or alternative forms of leave.
The overall rise in pending cases was “due to more cases entering the asylum system than receiving initial decisions”, the Home Office said, while noting that the increase was less than 1% in the three months to the end of June, indicating that the growth in the backlog was slowing.
“This is in part due to an increase in the number of initial decisions made, and an increase in the number of asylum decision makers employed,” the Home Office added.
In a separate statement, the Home Office said data that was slightly more recent – up to the end of July, rather than June – showed the backlog was falling, and that the department was confident of meeting Rishi Sunak’s pledge to clear the “legacy backlog”, comprising cases begun before the end of June 2022, by the end of 2023.
Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, said: “These new statistics set out in stark terms the complete chaos the Tories have created in the immigration and asylum system. Only 1% of last year’s 45,000 small boats cases have received a decision and the number of failed asylum seekers being returned is also down a whopping 70% since 2010. This is a disastrous record for the prime minister and home secretary.”
Statistics for formal migration showed that 1,438,471 visas were issued in the year to June 2023, 28% up on a year before, but slightly lower than the 2021 figure.
This included 538,887 work visas, 657,208 study visas, 75,717 family visas, and 5,201 visas for dependants joining or accompanying others. Additionally, 90,232 visas were issued under the Ukraine schemes, and 37,223 to British national (overseas) status holders from Hong Kong, while 28,986 were under the EU settlement scheme, and 5,017 were under other settlement schemes.
