The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration had today released a new report on Tier 1 of the Points Based System. Tier 1 of the Points Based System is designed to attract talented and highly skilled individuals to enter and remain in the UK.
You can download the full report here.
The report examined the efficiency and effectiveness of the Home Office's handling of entrepreneur and investor applications, with a particular focus on the consistency and quality of decisions.
In a press release, the Chief Inspector says he found that the Home Office was carrying out all security checks and tackling fraudulent Tier 1 applications and most decisions on investor applications were reasonable.
However, he found poor record keeping meant almost half of the decisions could not be assessed, and inconsistent customer service and poor forecasting had led to lengthy delays in processing UK applications.
The press release provided the following summary of the Chief Inspector's key findings:
• all necessary security checks were carried out on Tier 1 applications;
• effective links between decision-makers and intelligence units within the Home Office provided an important safeguard against fraudulent applications;
• 91% of decisions on investor cases were reasonable. However, this fell to 62.5% for entrepreneurs. Notably, all of the decisions assessed as being unreasonable, were decisions in which the applicant had been granted leave;
• in New York, Entry Clearance managers shared outcomes of Administrative Reviews with decision-makers, to improve the overall quality of their decisions in future cases;
• performance against service standards for applications made overseas was good with an average wait of 7.5 days. However, applications considered in Sheffield took, on average, 63 days for a decision;
• the Home Office had significantly underestimated the scale of the increase in entrepreneur applications following the closure of the Tier 1 Post Study work route. These rose by 1,520% between February and December 2012. As a result, they did not have the resources in place to deal with the applications and a backlog of 9,000 cases developed.
• despite recording 1,550 allegations against Tier 1 applicants, the Home Office was unable to tell the Chief Inspector what the outcome of the allegations had been;
• he was unable to assess the reasonableness of the Home Office's decisions in 42% of the cases sampled, due to a lack of retained evidence and inadequate case notes.