New NAO report examines performance of directorates that replaced the former UK Border Agency in March 2013
The National Audit Office (NAO) has released a new report looking at the performance of the two new Home Office directorates that replaced the former UK Border Agency in March 2013.
You can read the 59-page report, Reforming the UK border and immigration system, here.
The NAO says the new directorates (UK Visas and Immigration and Immigration Enforcement) have made progress in some areas but not across the whole business.
A press release says that the two directorates have had no significant performance falls during or after the split of the UK Border Agency, and service standards introduced by UK Visas and Immigration have given customers greater transparency regarding the time taken to complete different types of visa application.
However, the NAO raised concerns over the backlog of cases and over IT systems.
According to the NAO, UK Visas and Immigration has cleared all straightforward cases in the areas of temporary and permanent migration but, as at March 2014, the Department had around 301,000 open cases. These comprise some 85,000 which are in hand and remain within the timescales for reaching a decision in the temporary and permanent migration area; and other specific backlogs, most notably over 25,000 claims for asylum.
The NAO also says that poor IT means that the Department lacks the needed good quality information. A flagship £347 million Immigration Casework (ICW) programme which was supposed to replace the legacy Casework Information Database and 20 other systems was closed in August 2013, having not delivered all the planned functions.
The Telegraph picked up on the IT failings here and reported that the Home Office "wasted nearly £350 million on a computer system for dealing with immigration and asylum applications that was abandoned, forcing staff to revert to using an old system that regularly freezes."
According to the Telegraph, ministers have now commissioned another new computer system that is due to cost a further £209 million by 2016-17.
Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, was quoted in the NAO press release as saying: "The Home Office has started making significant changes since the Agency was broken up and has made progress in some areas. We would have expected greater progress by now though in tackling the problems we identified in 2012 in areas such as specific backlogs and IT. Among our recommendations is that the Department prioritize outstanding backlogs and act to prevent the cases that it classifies as unworkable building up into backlogs."