Tuckett steps down as Immigration Services Commissioner at the IAA to succeed David Neal as Independent Chief Inspector
John Tuckett has stepped down from his role as the Immigration Services Commissioner at the Immigration Advice Authority (IAA) in order to be immediately appointed as the new Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI), the Government announced yesterday.
Tuckett replaces David Bolt, who served as the interim ICIBI from June 2024 following the earlier sacking of David Neal by the then Home Secretary James Cleverly.
Whilst serving as the Immigration Services Commissioner, Tuckett oversaw the major transformation of the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC) to become the IAA. A new Immigration Services Commissioner has yet to be appointed, but the IAA said yesterday that John Tuckett would also continue to serve in the role on a part-time basis while the process for a new Commissioner is finalised.
Upon taking up his new role as the ICIBI, Tuckett said: "I am delighted and privileged to be taking up this important role and committed to providing robust, independent scrutiny of the UK's border security and immigration processes. My priority will be to help ensure the immigration system works efficiently and effectively while upholding the highest standards of fairness and security."
While the ICIBI is completely independent, the Government said the appointment of Tuckett was part of its Plan for Change to streamline the immigration system and strengthen borders while maintaining robust security checks.
Last month, the ICIBI published its annual report for the period April 2024 to March 2025. The then interim Independent Chief Inspector (ICI) David Bolt noted that the delayed appointment of his successor had disrupted the watchdog's work and prevented publication of inspection plans for two consecutive years.
Bolt stated: "While I have been happy to continue as interim ICI for longer than originally planned, the delays in making a permanent appointment and my short-term extensions have had a negative impact on the output of the inspectorate (the ICIBI) over the past year. In particular, they have affected the ICIBI's ability to publish an annual inspection plan either for 2024-25 or for 2025-26. I have refrained from doing this, in consultation with the Home Office, in order to allow the incoming ICI to determine his own programme of inspections, which is the cornerstone of the role's independence."
More generally in his annual report, Bolt warned that chronic resourcing pressures and backlogs continued to undermine improvements across the immigration and borders system, and he urged the Home Office to be more transparent when it drops previously announced reforms or commitments. He said it still took the department too long to implement agreed changes, and that many of the system's problems stemmed from data gaps, poor record-keeping and underperforming IT systems.
While Bolt noted that the publication of ICIBI inspection reports had become quicker (with five of six reports in 2024-25 released within eight weeks of submission), he stressed that delays by the Home Office in publishing reports has long been viewed as a constraint on the inspectorate's independence.
David Bolt wrote: "The sixth report took 13 weeks to publish. While I am not privy to how the Home Office assembles the advice it puts to ministers in response to reports, I am aware that it sometimes finds difficulty deciding who should be responsible for recommendations that cut across different business areas and ministerial portfolios. This was given as the reason for the extra time taken to publish the inspection report on the Immigration Enforcement Competent Authority. It is important that recommendations are 'owned', but alongside specific improvements to the inspected area, the ICIBI seeks to identify systemic problems and underlying causes of inefficiency and ineffectiveness, which by their nature require cross-cutting solutions. I expect the Home Office to reflect on the sense behind each recommendation and look to apply this wherever it is relevant across the [Migration and Borders] System. That it finds this difficult goes some of the way to explaining why these problems persist."
He also cautioned ministers to ensure that national security redactions in inspection reports were used sparingly and not in a way that could appear to limit critical scrutiny.