National Audit Office details struggles to reduce asylum backlog and contain spending on hotels
A new report published yesterday by the independent public spending watchdog, the National Audit Office (NAO), takes a detailed look at issues around the cost and efficiency of the asylum system.
Image credit: UK GovernmentThe 50-page report can be downloaded here. A 15-page summary of the report is also available here.
It examines the Home Office's asylum and protection transformation programme, which was introduced in 2021 with the aim of creating an asylum system that is "fair, supportive and efficient, where decisions made are right first time and customers in need of protection receive it quickly, and all are treated with dignity and respect".
The NAO explains: "This report examines the Home Office's progress in delivering the asylum and protection transformation programme. The report does not evaluate the wider policy changes, but it does discuss the potential impact of the Programme on parts of the wider asylum system. We consider the wider asylum system to include any parts of the Home Office and other government organisations that a person who has applied for asylum may need to interact with."
The report received plenty of media coverage. BBC News noted that the NAO's "highly critical report" warned that plans to make the asylum system more efficient are not on track, while the Financial Times highlighted that the report "cast doubt on the government's capacity to meet its promise of clearing the backlog in 2023".
In the report, the NAO notes that the Home Office spent approximately £3.6 billion on asylum support costs in 2022-23, nearly double the amount in 2021-22, and £2.2 billion more than the Home Office's funding for its Asylum and Protection Group.
By far the largest single element of asylum support spending is on hotel accommodation - no less than £2.28 billion was spent on hotels in 2022-23.
The report contains plenty of interesting information on the Home Office's efforts to tackle the backlog of over 130,000 asylum claims awaiting a decision. The NAO notes:
"By the end of April 2023, around 138,000 asylum claims were awaiting an initial decision. The Home Office is starting to reduce the backlog of 'legacy' claims, from more than 100,000 at the beginning of July 2022 to about 77,000 by the end of April 2023. However, to achieve this it has decided to abandon its ambition to make decisions on 'newer' claims within six months, meaning the backlog of 'newer' claims is growing. The Home Office estimates the number of 'newer' claims awaiting a decision will increase from almost 61,000 in April 2023 to around 84,000 by the end of December 2023.
"The Home Office is increasing the number of asylum caseworkers but only around one-fifth of those deciding claims are fully trained and working independently. The Home Office will only clear the backlog if it can recruit and retain sufficient fully effective caseworkers. The Home Office planned to have around 1,350 full-time equivalent caseworkers by April 2023 (up from 800 in April 2022) with 62% making decisions. By April 2023, it had around 1,270 full-time equivalent caseworkers, but only around 50% were deciding claims, and only around 140 of those deciding claims were fully trained and working independently. It can take six months to train a caseworker to be effective in their role so retaining staff is critical. The Home Office has reduced annual turnover of caseworkers from 46% in March 2022 to 25% by April 2023, in part by introducing a retention allowance.
"The Home Office has nearly doubled the number of asylum decisions it makes each week from about 690 in July 2022 to about 1,310 in April 2023. The Home Office expects that average weekly decisions will increase over the rest of 2023. Based on its current progress, we estimate that to clear legacy claims by December 2023, it needs to make an average of 2,200 decisions per week from May 2023. As part of its efforts to increase decisions, the Home Office has simplified processes for specific cohorts of people seeking asylum, such as the five countries where claims are most likely to be granted. It has also developed a separate process for claims from people from Albania, as the government states it is a safe country. While these processes have assisted the Home Office to increase the number of asylum decisions, it is not clear whether these improvements will be replicable for other groups with different characteristics.
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"The Home Office recognises the fast-moving policy environment as a significant risk for the Programme. It has had to change priorities and timetables regularly as new policies and priorities were announced. Its original transformation strategy set out a plan to remove the backlog of 'legacy' claims within four years, while making decisions on newer claims within six months, so that a new backlog did not build. However, the Prime Minister's statement to Parliament in December 2022 included an expectation that the Home Office would clear the backlog of initial decisions for legacy claims by the end of 2023, two years earlier than originally planned. Some senior Home Office staff described how pressure to deliver on short-term political priorities made it hard to focus on the longer-term strategy."
In April 2023, the Home Office's 640 active caseworkers (those making decisions) managed to achieve a target figure of making 2.5 decisions weekly.
As the NAO notes, the increase in decisions will create pressures in other parts of the wider asylum system, in particular with appeals.
An accompanying press release by the NAO states: "Appeals are expected to rise, with the Home Office estimating the number in progress could quadruple between July 2022 and March 2025 to 75,000. The Home Office has agreed to provide funding for the first six months of 2023-24 to help HMCTS increase its capacity to hold immigration and asylum hearings by almost 50%. HMCTS expects the recruitment of judges – which takes around 12 to 18 months – to be the most significant capacity challenge."
Also highlighted in the NAO's report are the problems the Home Office is having implementing its new Atlas casework technology. The report explains:
"Alongside its work to streamline caseworking processes, the Home Office is developing a new immigration technology platform, known as Atlas. This is being delivered through a separate programme, but delays developing Atlas have affected caseworker productivity and senior programme staff told us that it could impact progress on the Programme if delays continue. For example, during our fieldwork, caseworkers told us they currently could not add notes on asylum claims in Atlas, so recorded these in the older system. Asylum caseworkers told us they used both systems and had to 'double key' information between them, although the Home Office told us this ended in April 2023. The Home Office expects to decommission its old system by September 2023, but progress will depend on managing competing demands for design and digital capacity from other Home Office digital programmes, such as the Future Border and Immigration System.
"The delays introducing Atlas also affect the Home Office's ability to understand the Programme's performance and the impact of changes to the asylum system. To bring together the information necessary to inform strategic decisions, staff need to collate information from separate spreadsheets, which is time-consuming. Once complete, Atlas should allow quicker generation of reports."
In terms of accommodation, the NAO finds that the Home Office is failing to secure enough accommodation to end the use of hotels for people seeking asylum, and it has not effectively coordinated its range of work to identify asylum and resettlement accommodation, straining relationships with local authorities. According to the report, the Home Office now acknowledges that it is unlikely to achieve its accommodation targets and is looking at how it can increase its supply and identify different sources of accommodation.
Summing up the report's overall findings, Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said: "Despite recent progress, the asylum and protection transformation programme is a long way from meeting government's ambitions to reduce the cost and improve the quality of the service, The Home Office has nearly doubled the number of decisions made each week, although it is unclear whether it will be enough to remove the backlog of older asylum decisions by the end of 2023. To date, the Programme is not on track to achieve the expected benefits.
"The changes the Home Office plans to implement through the Programme are necessary, but not on their own sufficient, to address the pressures in the asylum system. To achieve value for money, the Home Office needs to better co-ordinate and manage the impacts of these changes, otherwise the department risks moving backlogs and cost pressures to other parts of the system – including local authorities – rather than resolving them."