We are amidst a sea of change in the Immigration and Asylum Sector. Part 1 of this blog dealt with the imminent (and now live) changes to timetables for all appeals lodged from the 12th August 2026 onwards. This splits the existing backlog into legacy cases that are not subject to this new timetable and in-scope cases that will be.
This second blog post from Immigration Barrister Jack Dingley looks forward to the sweeping changes set to be introduced by the Immigration and Asylum Bill currently working its way through Parliament, which will introduce a new appeals body and create a third category of appeals should it come into force.
Background on the New Independent Immigration Appeals Authority
Back in August 2025, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced the replacement of the existing protection appeals system, which sits within the Immigration and Asylum Chamber (The IAC) of the First-Tier Tribunal, with a new body staffed by independent adjudicators.
This announcement was light on the details, and what followed was a lengthy period of uncertainty of what this actually meant.
In November 2025, in a session of the Justice Committee, the Lady Chief Justice stated that the judiciary were given about 24 hours' notice of the decision to abolish the IAC, and all she could confirm was the intent of the Government to do so.
Shortly after, the new and current Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood gave some sparse details, confirming a phased transition to a new appeals body, funded by the same pot that funds the IAC, with a modified fast-track system.
The Tribunal, still dealing with a massive backlog of appeals, continued to recruit new Judges as normal, and continued to work towards the timetabling changes required by the Border, Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025.
The Immigration and Asylum Bill
On 30th June 2026, the proposed Immigration and Asylum Bill was finally published.
As well as provisions for the creation of the 'Independent Immigration Appeals Authority' (the IIAA), the bill intends to make significant changes to the interpretation of Article 8 ECHR. The bill makes changes to the form that grants of status are made, it introduces mechanisms to recoup funds from those provided support during the asylum process, and it seeks to make changes to the modern slavery framework.
There is a lot going on in this bill. This blog post will focus only on the abolishment of the IAC and creation of the IIAA, but that should not distract from the significance of other provisions which are equally as consequential to the sector.
The IIAA
Despite the publication of the Immigration and Asylum Bill, we still know very little. The provisions focus on the creation of the appeals body, and we will likely have to wait for the first practice direction to understand how the day-to-day is intended to operate.
However, there is still a lot we can learn from what is there. The bill intends to do the following:
1. Create the new IIAA, which is the intended venue for hearing Immigration and Asylum appeals that are currently dealt with by the IAC.
2. In outlining the purpose of this new body, the bill specifically highlights that the IIAA must "have regard to the public interest, and in particular the fact that the IIAA operates as a key part of the immigration and asylum system."
3. The heads of this new body are to be directly appointed by the Secretary of State.
4. Judges of the First-Tier Tribunal are to be replaced with two tiers of adjudicators:
a. Senior Adjudicators – must still be legally qualified like the current First-Tier Tribunal Judges (but prior experience is reduced from five years to two years).
b. Executive Adjudicators – who are not required to be legally qualified.
5. Provides the power for the IIAA to review its own decisions (similar to the existing slip-rule) and maintains a right of onward appeal to the Upper Tribunal on a point of law.
6. Establishes provisions for the Home Secretary to request the expedition of certain matters if they deem it to be in the public interest and gives the Home Secretary powers to regulate the operation of that request process.
7. Creates provisions for the transfer of proceedings between the new IIAA and the First-Tier Tribunal.
Jack Dingley's Reflections on The Immigration and Asylum Bill and the creation of the IIAA
The creation of this new body has been met with firm opposition from the professional sector.
The Bar Council, representing Barristers operating in this sector, and ILPA, representing Immigration and Asylum practitioners generally, have published statements raising concerns about the proposals.
We still do not know what this means for the appeals themselves, and how and where legal advice and representation fit in.
Even without a practice direction, the bill as it stands is sufficient to raise concern.
• Quality of decision-making – Immigration law has famously been described by the Court of Appeal as highly technical and byzantine in complexity. In that context, the replacement of legally trained specialist Judges with lay adjudicators is a recipe for disaster.
• Independence – The new body is told its primary purpose is as a function of the immigration and asylum system, its chair is appointed by the Home Secretary directly, and terms of remuneration for Adjudicators are to be determined by the Home Secretary. There are serious questions as to the appropriateness of one party to the proceedings being the person who appoints and employs those making the decisions, as well as having bespoke mechanisms to request expedition of claims that would give them a procedural advantage.
• Effectiveness – the current backlog is a result of the previous Government pausing decisions on asylum claims and then making them in bulk without considering the capacity of the Tribunals and legal sector to manage the inevitable appeals. Quick decision-making does not lead to good decision making and the quality of decisions has been poor. The pursuit of speed over quality will only kick this can further down the road. It does not take a clairvoyant to anticipate the next bottleneck in the Upper Tribunal, where new and not legally qualified Adjudicators are being asked to make complex legal decisions.
• Uncertainty – There still exists a substantial backlog in the legacy system; judges do not know whether they will have jobs next year, and the legal aid sector, which is already near the brink of collapse, cannot make decisions about recruitment without knowing what work there will be. Is the First-Tier Tribunal still going to exist in some capacity? Clause 15 permits the power to transfer proceedings back to the First-Tier Tribunal, and the ability to create regulations that would require the Upper Tribunal to remit cases back to the First-Tier Tribunal as opposed to the IIAA. It is unclear if this means the IAC will continue to operate beyond sunsetting its existing caseload, or if this is just a safety net in anticipation of the potential that this new system might not work as intended.
Conclusions
Since the publishing of this bill, we have had a new Prime Minister, but the Home Secretary remains the same, and there have been no suggestions of an agenda change. We can therefore expect that the Immigration and Asylum Bill will continue its passage through Parliament.
It is likely to face some hurdles, particularly when the universal message from professional stakeholders is that this is a bad idea that undermines the rule of law. It is important to remember that the immigration and asylum process involves decisions that might put a person at risk of death or torture and can separate families. These are not decisions that should be assessed lightly for political convenience.
There is an existing specialist Tribunal that works. Its capacity is overwhelmed, not through ineffectiveness or abuses of the process, but through poor planning on the part of the Home Secretary and the Ministry of Justice in funding of the courts, the legal aid sector, and failure to have an end-to-end oversight of the asylum process.
This new system intends to start hearing appeals by the end of 2027, that's just over a year away, and there are still a lot of questions as to how it will operate if the bill does become statute.
For now, it is business as usual. Practitioners remain busy, the existing backlog still needs winding down, and the immediate change of a fixed statutory timetable is enough to keep the sector busy.