Tribunal sees drop in number of judges and rise in backlog of appeals
The Law Society Gazette reported yesterday that there has been a sharp decline in the number of judges in the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal.
According to the Law Gazette, there were 347 fee-paid and 132 salaried judges in the First-tier Tribunal in 2012 and this declined to 242 fee-paid and 77 salaried judges by 2016.
The Upper Tribunal saw a decline from 40 fee-paid in 2012 to 35 in 2016. The number of salaried judges was unchanged at 42.
As the Law Gazette notes, the Government said last year that the number of outstanding appeals in the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal increased from 54,446 in October 2015 to 62,903 in September 2016.
"We do everything we can to avoid unnecessary delay in the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal, and have provided an additional 4,950 tribunal sitting days for this financial year to ensure current case loads do not increase. We are keeping performance under close review and are confident there is sufficient capacity to deal with the number of appeals we expect to receive," the Government said in answer to a written question by the Scottish National Party (SNP) MP Alison Thewliss in the Commons in December.
Solicitor Christopher Cole, a member of the Law Society's immigration law committee, told the Law Gazette: "The most common and frustrating issue has been the late adjourning of hearings due to a lack of judiciary. Delays in the first-tier tribunal (immigration and asylum chamber) have been pretty extreme over the last 18 months or so."
Alison Thewliss said in December that the Tribunal's backlog of appeals demonstrated the Government's "pull up the drawbridge" approach to immigration "is not fit for purpose" and was leading to "dire straits" for some of her constituents.
Conservative MP Steve Baker, who also asked a Commons question on the delays in hearings, said: "My casework team and I experience the continual frustration of constituents awaiting a hearing at a First-Tier (Immigration and Asylum) Tribunal. We know waiting for a hearing date causes considerable extra distress in what is an already stressful situation."
Baker said the announcement of the additional 4,950 tribunal sitting days was a "good start in implementing measures to deal with demand but we will remain in close touch with the practical issues of immigration."