David Crausby – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office
The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Crausby on 2016-01-21.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average waiting time for a decision on an asylum application was in each of the last 10 years; and what steps her Department is taking to reduce the waiting time for such decisions.
James Brokenshire
The table below shows the average time, in calendar days, from date of claim to date of decision including the number and percentage of cases that received a decision in six months. Figures for the year 2015 are not available.
|
Year of Application |
Apps |
Mean |
Median |
Decisions in 6 Months |
As a % of Apps |
|
2005 |
26,939 |
133.90 |
46 |
23,671 |
87.87% |
|
2006 |
25,020 |
165.06 |
52 |
21,065 |
84.19% |
|
2007 |
24,732 |
191.38 |
62 |
19,722 |
79.74% |
|
2008 |
27,182 |
223.65 |
97 |
19,944 |
73.37% |
|
2009 |
25,759 |
159.22 |
71 |
20,985 |
81.47% |
|
2010 |
20,012 |
82.11 |
29 |
18,391 |
91.90% |
|
2011 |
21,211 |
115.89 |
32 |
18,131 |
85.48% |
|
2012 |
21,315 |
161.70 |
30 |
16,098 |
75.52% |
|
2013 |
24,960 |
181.78 |
46 |
15,874 |
63.60% |
|
2014 |
26,070 |
141.32 |
135 |
19,287 |
73.98% |
The exercise in the financial year 2014-15 to clear all straightforward cases with a claim date preceding 1 April 2014 led to a rise in the average time for some of the years above most notably 2008.This required the progression of a number of cases far older than 12 months which would have influenced the average decision times on those cases.
The Home Office continues to target resources to drive down the waiting time for decisions and currently strives to give decisions on all straightforward cases within 6 months, a timescale which it has been consistently meeting since April 2014.
