Asylum accommodation Contents

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2Demands of the asylum system

9.The Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 sets out three circumstances under which asylum seekers are entitled to accommodation:

• while the Home Office is considering whether an individual is eligible for support (Section 98 of the Act)
• while the Home Office is assessing the application (Section 95), and
• when the application for asylum has been refused but the applicant has yet to leave the country (Section 4).13

The vast majority of people are housed under Section 95 and the number of people accommodated on this basis has almost doubled over the lifetime of the COMPASS contracts (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Number of people provided with dispersed accommodation under Section 95, by quarter

Source: Home Office, Immigration Statistics, November 2016, Table AS 17q

Increase in applications and waiting time

10.When the COMPASS contracts were drawn up the Home Office forecast that the system would need to accommodate between 20,000 and 25,000 asylum seekers at any one time. This has proved to be a huge under-estimate. When we began this inquiry Providers told us they were accommodating over 38,000 people. (See Table 1).

Table 1: Total number of asylum seekers accommodated by each Provider, February 2016

Provider	Asylum seekers accommodated
Serco	14,364
G4S	17,308
Clearsprings Group	6,769
TOTAL	38,441

Source: Written evidence received by the Committee

11.The main factors that affect demand for accommodation are the number of destitute people applying for asylum and the length of time they are accommodated. Since the start of the COMPASS contracts the demand for asylum has generally outstripped the number of applications the Home Office has been able to process (see Figure 2). This has meant more people requiring accommodation, and for longer, while they wait for a decision on their case. It has put considerable pressure on all parts of the asylum system including Providers, public services, third sector organisations and local communities. Rupert Soames OBE, Chief Executive of Serco, agreed that the pressure on asylum accommodation would reduce if the Home Office were able to speed up the time it took to process applications. He told us:

We have seen that the average time we are looking after people has increased. It is difficult for them [the Home Office] and it is leading to longer periods of time. I can hardly get my head around the idea that we are still looking after people who have been in properties four or five years and are doing nothing.14

Figure 2: Number of applications, decisions and pending decisions for main applicants and their dependants, by quarter

Source: Home Office, Immigration Statistics, November 2016, Table AS_02q

12.The Government has committed to providing a decision within six months on all straightforward asylum claims and within a year for all cases considered to be ‘non-straightforward’. As of September 2016, 27,252 people were awaiting an initial decision on their application for asylum, the highest number since the start of the COMPASS contracts. Of these, 16,880 (62%) had been waiting less than six months and 10,372 (38%) had been waiting for more than six months; a further 6,745 cases were pending further review (see Figure 3 below).15 Between 40–50% of applications for asylum are granted.16

Figure 3: Asylum applications pending initial decision and further review

Source: Home Office, Immigration statistics, November 2016, Table AS_02q

13.In late 2014 and early 2015 the Government made significant improvements to its management of asylum casework and reduced the backlog in the asylum system.17 As Figures 2 and 3 above show, the number of cases pending a decision for more than six months halved; the total number of cases waiting for a decision dropped; and increases in the number of people requiring accommodation slowed. The Government was also clearing all straightforward cases within its target time of six months. Unfortunately, this welcome progress did not continue.

14.The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) warned in early 2016 that increasing asylum intake “posed a risk to efficiency and effectiveness in this area, and the Home Office needed to take care not to allow cases, and particularly non-straightforward cases, to build up to a level that meant performance against service standards began to deteriorate.”18 In the second half of 2015, as the number of applications for asylum increased, a perhaps predictable outcome given the migration crisis engulfing Europe, the number of applications being processed by the Home Office failed to keep pace. As a result the asylum system is under greater pressure today than at any period during the lifetime of the COMPASS contracts. Yet in the financial year 2015–16 there were 260 staff responsible for interviewing and deciding asylum claims, a significant reduction on the 409 staff in FY 2014–15.19

15.We have warned in previous reports that the asylum system is under strain and that a backlog in cases has been developing. Those warnings were not heeded and the consequences are now evident, with Providers struggling to source sufficient adequate accommodation to meet demand. Pressure on the asylum system, and on accommodation in particular, will not reduce unless the Government takes action to increase its capacity to process applications. The Home Office was successful in doing this, albeit for only a few quarters, by devoting more resources to the task, and it needs to do so again as a matter of urgency. There are clear benefits in applications being processed quickly and these far outweigh the cost of increasing capacity in the responsible section of the Home Office, UK Visas & Immigration. We need to see a marked fall in the number of applications awaiting a decision in the statistics covering the first half of 2017.

Work in progress and appeals

16.The Home Office provides an annual snapshot of work in progress at a particular time. As Table 2 shows, a proportion of asylum seekers will be awaiting the outcome of an initial decision or appeal or be subject to removal action.

Table 2: Annual snapshot of asylum work in progress by stage of process

	2012 Q2	2013 Q2	2014 Q2	2015 Q2	2016 Q2
Awaiting initial decision	6,192	8,980	16,980	11,797	20,300
Appeal outstanding	4,706	4,328	3,317	8,966	12,333
Subject to removal action20	23,497	23,438	20,869	23,571	26,879
Further leave application outstanding	2,986	2,724	2,953	2,802	2,990
Post decision	-	-	1,432	2,083	2,950
On hold21	-	-	10,275	11,223	11,988
Total work in progress	37,381	39,470	55,814	60,442	77,440

Source: UK Visas and Immigration, Asylum transparency data, August 2016, Table ASY_3

Table 3: Annual snapshot of asylum work in progress by age of case

	2012 Q2	2013 Q2	2014 Q2	2015 Q2	2016 Q2
Case Age 0-12 months	11,516	12,659	16,922	17,403	28,544
Case Age 12-24 months	6,477	6,822	9,907	9,379	11,169
Case Age 24 -36 months	5,407	4,939	6,709	7,670	7,402
Case Age +36 months	13,981	15,050	22,276	25,990	30,325
Total work in progress	37,381	39,470	55,814	60,442	77,440

Source: UK Visas and Immigration, Asylum transparency data, August 2016, Table ASY_3

17.The Home Office also provides analysis of the recorded outcomes of the group of applicants at a particular time in any one year. Table 4 shows that around 40% of initial decisions are to grant asylum and around 30% of appeals are successful. In total, just under half of all applications for asylum will be granted. To put that into context, around 16,000 people currently housed in asylum accommodation under Section 95 will eventually be granted asylum.

Table 4: Outcome analysis of asylum application, as of May 2016

	2012	2013	2014	2015
Main applications	21,843	23,584	25,033	32,733
Withdrawn or outcome not known	2,785	3,046	3,302	9,208
Initial decisions	19,058	20,538	21,731	23,525
Initial decision to grant some form of protection	6,989 (37%)	7,719 (38%)	9,678 (45%)	9,324 (40%)
Initial decision to refuse application	12,069 (63%)	12,819 (62%)	12,053 (55%)	14,201 (60%)
Appeals lodged	8,935	9,458	9,363	8,949
Appeals allowed	2,559	2,658	2,885	995
% of appeals allowed	29	28	31	11
Total afforded some kind of protection	9,548 (44%)	10,377 (44%)	12,563 (50%)	10,319 (32%)
Total refused protection	11,783	12,178	9,941	9,168
No. of cases outstanding	512	1,029	2,529	13,246

Source: Home Office, Immigration statistics, November 2016, Table AS_06

18.In our previous Reports we have drawn attention to the large number of appeals that are successful. Table 5 shows that the courts allowed 1,252 out of 1,442 (87%) appeals by Eritrean nationals in the period Q4 2015 to Q3 2016. During the same period over half the appeals by Afghan nationals were also successful.22

Table 5: Asylum appeal applications and determination by nationality, Q4 2015 to Q3 2016

Country of nationality	Appeals received	Total appeals determined	Appeals allowed	Success rate (%)
Afghanistan	893	593	300	51
Albania	641	666	216	32
Eritrea	885	1,442	1,252	87
Bangladesh	787	469	72	15
Iran	1,785	808	380	47
Iraq	1,502	532	208	39
Libya	213	264	121	46
Pakistan	1,181	922	280	30
Sudan	246	226	141	62
Syria	154	131	44	34

Source: Home Office, Immigration statistics, November 2016, Table AS_14q

19.In addition to increasing its capacity to process applications for asylum, the Government should do more to ensure that its initial decisions are correct. Around 30% of decisions to refuse asylum are overturned in the courts, and this figure is much higher for certain nationalities such as Eritreans and Iranians. This is an unacceptable rate of error on the part of the Home Office. Incorrect decisions, if appealed, mean that those affected will require asylum accommodation for longer, adding further pressure to an already stretched system. The Government needs to improve its decision-making and commit to regular reviews of its approach to those nationalities which the courts are consistently identifying as receiving incorrect decisions. We have highlighted specific nationalities, such as Eritreans and Afghans in this and previous Reports. We need to see progress in this area and for this to show in future quarterly immigration statistics.

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13 Immigration Act 1999

14 Q281

15 Home Office, Immigration statistics, November 2016, Table AS_02q

16 Home Office, Immigration statistics, November 2016, Table AS_01 and AS_06

17 Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, An inspection of asylum casework, March-July 2015, February 2016

18 Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, An inspection of asylum casework, March-July 2015, February 2016

19 Home Office, Asylum transparency data, Table Asy_04, November 2015 and 2016

20 The Subject to Removal Action figure demonstrates that the majority of cases in the work in progress caseload have been processed through the initial stages of the asylum system and are now ‘subject to removal action’. Whilst some cases in this category await imminent removal, for many there will be significant barriers to removal which the department is still working to overcome. Such barriers include: difficulties in obtaining documents from national governments; dealing with last minute legal challenges; and logistical and practical challenges in removing families in a humane and dignified fashion.

21 The methodology for work in progress was amended in April 2014, to count reapplications and pre-decision absconders within the total work in progress numbers. Under the new methodology, the new ‘On Hold’ sub-category includes pre- and post-decision absconders (the latter was previously counted within other sub-categories; the former was not counted). The ‘Post Decision’ sub-category includes cases that have had a decision but have not appealed, are not ‘appeal rights exhausted’, and have not been removed.

22 Home Affairs Committee, Second Report of Session 2015–16, Work of the Immigration Directorates (Q4 2015), HC 22

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24 January 2017