Asylum and Immigration - Constitutional Affairs Committee Contents


Memorandum submitted by the Office of the President, Asylum and Immigration Tribunal

SUBJECT: AIT JUDICIAL COMPETITIONS

BACKGROUND

  At the CASC hearing on 28 February Lord Falconer was questioned on the backlog of asylum and immigration cases. He replied by saying that 100 new asylum and immigration judges were being recruited. He said that the competition to recruit 100 extra judges had to be postponed.

  There are in fact two separate judicial competitions underway. One to recruit 10 new salaried Immigration Judges in Bradford and Stoke, and a UK wide one to recruit 100 extra judges to the AIT. It was the Bradford and Stoke competition that Lord Falconer was referring to. At his appearance before CASC the President of the AIT, Sir Henry Hodge, offered to write once more to clarify the scope of both competitions.

STOKE & BRADFORD SALARIED IMMIGRATION JUDGE COMPETITION

    —  A competition commenced last year to fill 10 vacancies for salaried Immigration Judges in the Bradford and Stoke area. 114 applications were received for these positions. It had been anticipated that following this competition appointments would have been made by the end of December 2005.

    —  During the process problems arose with the way that the applications had been handled and the Lord Chancellor could not be confident that all applicants had been treated equally.

    —  The Lord Chancellor decided therefore that the competition should be annulled and a fresh competition commenced. The 114 candidates who had applied were written to in Dec 2005 and notified of this.

    —  Arrangements are now underway to run a new competition and it is anticipated that the appointments will be completed by the end of September 2006.

NATIONAL FEE-PAID IMMIGRATION JUDGE COMPETITION

    —  There is a completely separate competition ongoing to recruit an extra 100 fee-paid Immigration Judges (as part of a total of 210 vacancies) across the UK.

    —  Approximately 100 of the 210 vacancies are completely new posts with the remaining 110 posts equating to the number of Immigration Judges within the AIT on non-renewable contracts who are being asked to apply for posts within this open competition. I understand that all 110 have been sifted in, although there is no guarantee that they will all be successful at the interview stage.

    —  The timetable for completion of these appointments has been delayed by two months. This is in most part due to the very high volume of applications and partly to ensure that there were no repeat of the problems experienced in the Stoke & Bradford competitions.

    —  We expect all appointments for these vacancies to be completed by the end of September 2006 with London appointments expected to be filled by the end of July 2006.

Philip Lawley

Head of President's Office





 
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