Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration examines Home Office's use of Emergency Travel Documents

The Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration has released an inspection report examining the Home Office's processes for obtaining and using Emergency Travel Documents (ETDs).

An ETD is a travel document issued by a foreign high commission, embassy or consulate for the purpose of removing a person from the UK who has failed to produce a valid passport.

You can read the full inspection report here.

The Chief Inspector says the Home Office was working well with some foreign embassies to obtain ETDs. However, in many cases it was not actively generating removals despite already having secured ETDs for them.

"I was concerned to find that the Home Office had not used several thousand ETDs that had already been agreed by embassies. In some instances, these agreements dated back more than ten years. Many cases were not being actively progressed, leaving individuals' immigration status unresolved. This is unacceptable," the Chief Inspector said.

The Home Office was also criticised by the Chief Inspector for having no clear picture of the scale of non-compliance by individuals, and had no effective strategy for tackling the issue. The Chief Inspector says he was surprised to find that there was no high-level strategy in place to link the ETD application process with removals priorities.

A press release listed the Chief Inspector's concerns as follows:

• management of the stock of unused ETDs was poor and this pool was not being used to generate removals. 78% of those in our sample who were in contact with the Home Office were not being actively caseworked. 15% of the sample had been granted some form of residency or leave to remain, so should not have remained in the pool;

• the Home Office was applying for too many ETDs that had little prospect of being used, rather than focusing resources on cases where re-documentation was likely to result in removal;

• there was no central monitoring of the progress of the stock of approximately 4,000 outstanding ETD applications that the Home Office manages at any given time, which had led to some applications remaining unresolved for long periods;

• the average detention time for FNOs in our sample who were classified by the Home Office as individual non-compliant was 563 days. Where the embassy was categorised by the Home Office as 'non-compliant', the average detention time was 755 days;

• supporting information that could assist in securing an ETD was not retained on a systematic basis as part of the visa application process;

• there was scope to improve interview processes and increase the use of effective ones such as detained interview schemes;

• the quality assurance process for ETD applications was not standardised and there was no audit trail, which meant the quality of ETD applications could not be assessed;

• management information on aspects of the ETD process was inadequate and did not give an accurate picture of performance, including information on how many currently removable cases would need an ETD to be concluded.

On the plus side, the Chief Inspector was pleased to find that:

• the Home Office had developed good relationships with a number of embassies, which had resulted in efficient, successful re-documentation processes;

• detained interview schemes were particularly likely to result in the swift issuance of an emergency travel document;

• Returns Liaison Officers based at British embassies overseas and specialist investigation teams played an important role in obtaining ETDs in a number of cases.