A new independent body tasked with dealing with asylum appeals more quickly is to be created, the Home Office has announced.
The department said the move has been driven in partnership with the Ministry of Justice to deal with what home secretary Yvette Cooper describes as “completely unacceptable delays” with the appeals process “inherited” from the Sunak government.
According to the Home Office, there is currently a backlog of 106,000 cases waiting to be heard by the First-Tier Tribunal, which deals with challenges to decisions made by government, councils and other public sector organisations. It said that “at least” 51,000 of those cases are asylum appeals.
The Home Office said that the rate of initial asylum decisions had doubled since Labour returned to power in July last year, but delays over appeals are now the biggest cause of pressure in the asylum accommodation system. Figures released last week showed that 32,059 asylum seekers were being housed in hotels at the end of June this year, an increase of 8% from the end of June 2024.
The department said most failed asylum seekers appealed their initial decision and that a first appeal decision could take more than a year to be made.
It said that the new independent body proposed would be made up of professional adjudicators with a mandate to hear asylum-appeal cases more quickly, allowing “capacity to be surged so that cases can be cleared”.
The Home Office said the new body would be “fully independent of government” and feature safeguards to ensure high standards. It will have statutory powers to prioritise cases from those in asylum accommodation and foreign national offenders.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper said the government had inherited an asylum system “in complete chaos” from the Conservative Party, with a soaring backlog of cases and thousands of people in the system for years on end.
“We are determined to substantially reduce the number of people in the asylum system as part of our plan to end asylum hotels,” she said.
“Already since the election we have reduced the backlog of people waiting for initial decisions by 24% and increased failed asylum returns by 30%.
“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. Overhauling the appeals system so that it is swift, fair and independent, with high standards in place, is a central part of our Plan for Change.”
In addition to the new independent body for asylum appeals, ministers are also introducing a new legal requirement for a 24-week timeframe for the First-Tier Tribunal to determine asylum appeals from foreign offenders and those receiving asylum accommodation support.
On Friday, the Home Office confirmed that it would seek to appeal against an interim High Court decision calling for the closure of a hotel in Essex being used to house asylum seekers that has been the focus of local protests in recent weeks.
Former Home Office permanent secretary Sir David Normington warned on Thursday that that the department would face a challenging time if more local authorities looked to follow Epping Forest District Council’s lead in resorting to planning law to close such accommodation.