National Audit Office highlights how delays and inefficiencies in asylum system contribute to rising costs
Image credit: UK GovernmentThe National Audit Office (NAO) has today published a significant new analysis of the asylum system. You can download the NAO's 56-page report here. An accompanying data visualisation, covering the end-to-end system for managing asylum claims, is available online here.
The analysis highlights persistent delays and bottlenecks across the asylum system, with large numbers of people remaining in the system for extended periods, contributing to rising costs and inefficiencies. In a sample of 5,000 asylum claims lodged in January 2023 examined by the NAO, over half (56%) of the cases remained unresolved nearly three years later.
The NAO stated: "Our analysis shows how efforts to improve the system in recent years have often been short-term and narrowly focused on one area of the system in reaction to large backlogs and sharply increasing costs. Increases in speed of processing have sometimes come at the expense of the quality of decisions, and improvements in one area have shunted problems elsewhere. There has also been no realistic approach to the fact that in a significant number of cases it is not possible to return people whose claims have been refused. As a result, the system has incurred significant costs – primarily on accommodation and support – that might have been avoided."
While the NAO said it was encouraged by examples of officials tackling root causes of delays and working across organisational boundaries, it noted that these improvements remain somewhat piecemeal and not yet fully embedded across the asylum system. It added that progress continues to be constrained by the lack of robust, interoperable data needed to support consistent, high-quality decision-making.
On the overall problems with data, the report notes: "Poor quality data and workarounds have been a long-standing characteristic of the asylum system. In 2023 we reported that the Home Office had been slow to implement its new case management system, Atlas. At the time, asylum caseworkers were using two systems to enter or update the same information. The Home Office has now moved fully to Atlas for asylum case management (as well as all other migration and borders casework), but the transition has been complex and there is further to go on data quality, system functionality and data sharing with other parts of government. The Home Office has faced significant challenges with transferring and merging its legacy data, improving functionality and upskilling staff to create a single reliable record in Atlas for each person seeking asylum. The process of resolving identities and linking records across systems is ongoing. The lack of a single, complete, reliable record of all the necessary data on each person seeking asylum is a constraint on the efficiency and quality of decision-making and the Home Office's ability to manage and forecast demand across the system."
The report further highlighted ongoing challenges with decision-making despite recent efforts to improve quality, noting that a May 2025 sample showed a 42% rate of significant or fail errors. It stated: "Home Office operational leaders told us they had captured significant learning from the experience of rapidly surging activity to tackle the case backlog in 2023, in terms of understanding the drivers of efficient case flow, the factors that affect decision quality, and how they are linked. The Home Office has returned to more rigorous recruitment procedures for caseworkers and implemented a quality improvement plan. It is focused on improving technical support to caseworkers, addressing their knowledge gaps through targeted coaching, and bringing together feedback from appeals to improve decision quality. The Home Office is also trialling the use of AI tools to summarise lengthy case notes to save time for caseworkers. At the same time, caseworkers we spoke to were frustrated by continuing problems with data quality and interoperability. Decision quality remains a challenge, with 42% of sampled decisions in a rolling twelve months to May 2025 having significant or fail errors."
Summing up its overall findings, the NAO identified four key enablers it says are needed for an effective, value-for-money asylum system, as shown in the following table:
| Key enabler – and why it is important | What is the challenge for the asylum system? |
1 A whole-system approach In a whole-system approach, organisations across the system work collaboratively to establish a shared understanding of objectives and service outcomes. They agree ways of working to make consistent trade-offs between conflicting objectives and priorities in different parts of the system, using the likely impact on outcomes as the basis for trade-offs. | There is no single point of accountability for outcomes or a governance structure for the end-to-end asylum system. The parts of government involved each have their own wider objectives, distinct legal duties, statutory responsibilities and budgets. Without a whole-system approach, the government has not set out the overall outcomes it aims to achieve through the asylum system or agreed shared objectives across the different bodies involved. Interventions have tended to be reactive and focused on fixing an urgent problem in one part of the system only, such as intake or initial decisions, without a clear view of the effects on other parts. There are weak incentives for officials in one part of the system to actively support efficiency in other parts, which can lead to rework, delays and costs. |
2 Addressing fundamental barriers To deliver value for money, the asylum system needs to be able to process and decide claims in a fair, efficient and timely way and implement those decisions, including enforcing removals. Lengthy delays put at risk the welfare and life chances of people seeking asylum, represent an unproductive use of taxpayers' money on accommodation and support, and erode public confidence in the system's fairness and effectiveness. | There are fundamental, known obstacles to progressing a significant proportion of claims, so people remain in the system for extended periods. This causes uncertainty, hardship and poor value for taxpayers' money. Those without genuine asylum claims may also exploit these aspects of the system to stay in the UK. The system features that prevent cases progressing include: the inability to promptly remove some people who have exhausted their appeal rights but do not leave voluntarily; a high level of repeated claims and appeals; frequent changes in policy and global events; and the fact that time spent waiting can itself make it more likely that claims are granted on appeal. |
3 Timely, robust, shared data In government systems that interact with people, it is important for officials to collect accurate data once, in a standard format that can be used throughout the system, and share it appropriately to support accurate, efficient decisions and processes. | Poor-quality data, duplicate data entry and workaround spreadsheets have been a long-standing characteristic of the asylum system. The Home Office has now moved fully to its Atlas case management system, but there is further to go to provide the full functionality and to create a reliable single record of all data on each person seeking asylum. It is not yet possible to track individuals or cases through Home Office, HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) and local authority systems using a unique identifier. |
4 A resilient, strategic approach to capacity and workforce In efficient, value-for-money processes, work is done right first time, cases flow through the process at a pace needed to meet people's needs without creating backlogs, and the resources in the system flex to meet reasonable expectations of fluctuation in demand. | There are several capacity constraints that limit the effective functioning of the asylum system, including recruiting and retaining experienced caseworkers, availability of suitable temporary accommodation, capacity in the legal aid sector and judicial capacity for hearing appeals. In recent years, the government's approach has been characterised by rapid surging of capacity in one part of the system. Addressing the constraints is challenging in the context of fiscal restraint, housing shortages and limits on civil service recruitment. Each of the systems within the asylum system is under pressure more widely, not just on managing asylum. |
Gareth Davies, head of the NAO commented: "Our analysis shows that the efforts of successive governments to improve the efficiency of the asylum system have often been short-term and narrowly focused, reacting to backlogs and rising costs. Successfully implementing the new asylum model recently announced by the Home Secretary will require effective action on the bottlenecks in the current system using better quality data and streamlined decision-making."