Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration finds Home Office’s ineffective performance in family reunions is failing applicants and refugees

A new inspection report by David Bolt, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI), was published last week. It examines the Home Office's management of refugee family reunion applications, specifically applications made between 1 January 2022 and 30 September 2022.

You can download the 72-page report here.

The headline finding from the report is that Home Office's performance in the area of family reunion is ineffective and is failing applicants and refugees.

David Bolt said the inspection revealed a "system beset with delays and a team ill-equipped to manage the complexity and volume of applications awaiting consideration" leading to "unacceptable waiting times for applicants".

Bolt added that the effectiveness of the family reunion route had deteriorated since the ICIBI's last inspection in 2019.

According to Home Office data, 7,970 applications for family reunion were submitted between 1 January 2022 and 30 September 2022.

While the Home Office has a published service standard of 60 working days for making decisions on family reunion applications, a large backlog had built up.

The report states: "The backlog in this area is almost 8,000 applications and there is no evidence of any prioritisation of these based on vulnerability. Applications sit in a pile and will only be expedited through MP correspondence, threat of litigation or sheer luck. Only then is any assessment of vulnerability made by a decision maker (DM). The vast majority of applications are not considered by a DM until more than double the service standard of 60 working days. This is unacceptable."

Inspectors found examples of applications in the backlog that were for children in a precarious or unsafe situation applying to join parents in the UK.

In terms of staff numbers, the report notes: "As at October 2022, the family reunion team structure included 60 staff, across two main teams: admin and workflow, and decision making (with a separate appeals team) led by a Grade 6 (G6) and two Grade 7 (G7) managers."

David Bolt said the inspection found that a majority of the Home Office staff were committed and hard working, but there were leadership and management failures by senior staff who inadequately plan for and then fail to deliver effective change.

The family reunion casework team was transferred from Sheffield to Croydon over a period from November 2021 to March 2022. The ICIBI finds this transfer had been problematic, with insufficient consideration of the scale and nature of the challenge in setting up a new team to process family reunion applications.

The report highlights: "The family reunion team in Croydon had very limited experience of decision making and, despite the training received, the productivity of DMs had been 'lower than anticipated'. A manager told inspectors: 'The lack of experience slows everything down'."

Work on family reunion applications was further hindered by the redeployment of experienced staff to work on the Homes for Ukraine scheme.

David Bolt said: "The Home Office is rightly proud of the way that staff respond to crises, but the redirection of resources to meet the demands of the latest crisis can have a negative impact on business-as-usual activity, often to the detriment of vulnerable individuals who may themselves have been victims of earlier crises. This leads to an inefficient and ineffective approach which requires confident and assured leadership to overcome."

He continued: "Because the Home Office has failed to give this area an appropriate level of attention and priority, what should be a safe, legal, and accessible immigration route is failing both applicants, who are predominantly women and children, and refugees hoping to be reunited with their family members as they rebuild their lives here. As stakeholders have highlighted, the lack of an effective family reunion route carries with it the risk that vulnerable people will resort to dangerous journeys to join their family members in the UK."

The Home Office's response to the report is available here. All five of the ICIBI's recommendations were accepted.

The Home Office welcomed the ICIBI's proposals on how to improve the family reunion application process, and said it was committed to improving and speeding up processing times.