London, Aug 25: A new independent body will be set up to speed up decision making on asylum appeal cases in the country and tackle a mounting backlog, the UK government has announced.
The aim of the move laid out this week will be to overhaul the system to speed up decision-making on whether a refugee has the right to be granted asylum in the UK.
This is aimed at accelerating returns of those not entitled to asylum and ending hotels to house asylum-seekers awaiting a final decision on their appeals, an issue that has attracted large protests and counter-protests in parts of the country.
“We are determined to substantially reduce the number of people in the asylum system as part of our plan to end asylum hotels,” said Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who blamed the previous Conservative Party for the backlog of cases.
“We inherited an asylum system in complete chaos with a soaring backlog of asylum cases and a broken appeals system with thousands of people in the system for years on end. That is why we are taking practical steps to fix the foundations and restore control and order to the system,” said Cooper.
“Already since the election we have reduced the backlog of people waiting for initial decisions by 24 per cent and increased failed asylum returns by 30 per cent. But we cannot carry on with these completely unacceptable delays in appeals as a result of the system we have inherited, which mean that failed asylum seekers stay in the system for years on end at huge cost to the taxpayer,” she said.
The Labour Cabinet minister insisted that overhauling the appeals system will make it “swift, fair and independent”.
The proposed new body will be fully independent of government with safeguards to ensure high standards and is expected to use the expertise of independent professionally trained adjudicators focusing particularly on asylum appeals and will allow capacity to be surged so cases can be cleared.
It will have statutory powers to prioritise cases from those in asylum accommodation and foreign national offenders.
Official Home Office figures revealed a backlog of 106,000 cases waiting to be heard by the current system of First-Tier Tribunal, including at least 51,000 asylum appeals.
The wait times for these hearings have been increasing, with an average wait time of 53 weeks. As a result, the number of failed asylum seekers now waiting in the appeal system has increased substantially as most appeals and decisions, even at a first tier level, can take over a year.
The British government is also introducing a new legal requirement for a 24-week timeframe for the First Tier Tribunal to determine asylum appeals by those receiving asylum accommodation support and appeals by foreign offenders.
The Home Office indicated that lessons will be learned from other European countries who have faster appeal systems, including countries which run independent appeal bodies rather than absorbing appeals entirely into the main courts and judicial systems.
Amid ongoing protests against the use of hotels to house asylum-seekers, the Prime Minister Keir Starmer Labour government is keen to highlight its record since the general election in July last year.
“At its peak under the last government over 400 asylum hotels were open in summer 2023, costing almost 9 million pounds a day. There are now just over 200 and better use of the hotels of the ones we must use have helped cut asylum costs by 11 per cent,” the Home Office said.
“The government has surged asylum decision-making capacity, delivering over 31,000 initial decisions to people per quarter – triple the average under the previous government. The case backlog is down 18 per cent, with the number of people waiting for decisions down by 24 per cent and we’ve achieved the third-highest quarterly decision rate since records began in 2002,” it claimed.
Further details of the government’s new fast-track plans for the asylum system are set to be tabled in the coming weeks. (PTI)
