Officials say number of decisions is rising significantly and legacy backlog on track to be cleared by end of year
In a letter to the Commons Home Affairs Committee made public on Tuesday, Suella Braverman confirmed that the Home Office had nearly 1,600 asylum decision makers in place early last month and is on track to have 2,500 by September.
Image credit: UK GovernmentThe Home Secretary wrote on 3 August: "I am happy to confirm we have already increased our headcount since May. As my officials set out at the Public Accounts Committee on 10 July, the current number of asylum decision makers employed by the Home Office, caveated as internal management information, is 1,594 (headcount). We expect a significant amount of decision makers to begin in July, this will bring the expected headcount to 1,800 by the end of the month, and we remain on track to have 2,500 decision makers by September 2023."
As referenced by Braverman, the Public Accounts Committee last month heard evidence on the Home Office's asylum transformation programme from three top Home Office officials. The figure of 1,594 caseworkers was provided by Abi Tierney, the Director General of HM Passport Office and UK Visas and Immigration. The figure is up from the 1,280 caseworkers in place on 1 May 2023.
The 48-page transcript of the Public Accounts Committee's evidence session can be read here.
Dame Diana Johnson, the chair of the Home Affairs Committee, was also present at the session. She asked Abi Tierney whether the Home Office was confident that it could reach its goal to have 2,500 decision makers in place by the end of September.
Tierney replied: "I am. Over 2,000 people have accepted roles. It is the case that we have that process in place. We know exactly what that shape of onboarding is going to be. We know where everybody is in that onboarding process. I am confident. We even have flex within that 2,000, because we know that some will drop out in that process."
She continued: "Based on the current trajectory that I am confident will deliver clearing the backlog, we are assuming that for the last quarter of the year, 1,600 decision makers will be delivering their productivity targets."
Matthew Rycroft, Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office, clarified that it takes a year or so to get to full productivity from decision makers, hence the reduced number delivering full productivity targets compared to the total number of decision makers. Though Aby Tierney said the Home Office is looking to see significant improvements in the time taken.
Tierney had earlier explained: "One of the things that the [National Audit Office] Report had rightly pulled out was that it was taking a long time to get our asylum decision makers productive. That was because we were doing very lengthy training to ensure that they were up to speed with all the different countries, the potential country guidance and what was needed. One of the things that we are doing is getting decision-making units to focus either on single countries or on countries where the issues are similar. The training for the decision makers has now been shortened as a result, which means that they are more productive and become experts more quickly. Once we are through clearing the backlog, we will top up their training in the other areas. That gives you an example of how we are approaching the different countries. It is much more specialist."
Diana Johnson later asked about progress in clearing of the asylum backlog: "I want to go back to the new caseworkers you will have in place by the end of September. We know from the [National Audit Office] Report that to clear the remaining backlog and meet the Prime Minister's target—we understand that about 17,000 had been cleared by April, leaving about 77,000 to be cleared by the end of the year—you would need to make, on average, 2,200 decisions per week from May. How are you getting on with that?"
Abi Tierney said the Home Office is now seeing a significant increase in the number of decisions. She noted that the number of decisions is going up each week, reaching, in broad-brush terms, about 1,700 in the week prior to 10 July.
Tierney added: "Again, this is management information rather than published information from that perspective, so I do want to heavily caveat it. Our trajectory would see us making approximately 2,500 decisions a week by the end of July, and we are on track to achieve that currently."
Matthew Rycroft had earlier said that the goal of clearing the backlog by the end of 2023 remained on track. He explained: "[W]e have sped up the processing. We have ensured that for some cohorts where there is a very high grant, we do not have to have a very long interview. Secondly, we have increased the number of caseworkers … Thirdly, we have increased the productivity of the average caseworker. The average fully trained caseworker is now taking more decisions per week than they previously were. All those are measures designed to fulfil the Prime Minister's commitment to reduce the legacy backlog to zero by the end of this year, and we are on track to do that."
When asked about the quality of decisions being made, Aby Tierney replied: "As I mentioned, one of the things that we have done is increase the number of technical specialists and managers to ensure that the support and the quality assurance processes are in place. When we are making this number of decisions, there may sometimes be errors. I do not think we have increased that risk significantly in this process. By the really targeted training, that specialism should, in some ways, help to prevent that, rather than somebody working and making decisions across many countries."
Tierney said that when the legacy backlog is cleared, attention will then turn to clearing the flow and this will be able to be done in a much more effective way than previously due to the large number of highly productive decision makers in place.
While Tierney and Rycroft noted that the number of decision makers leaving the job is improving from the 46% seen only two years, it still remains far short of where it needs to be. The Home Office is aiming for an attrition rate of around 8%, but officials could not say when this rate might be achieved.