An analysis of the asylum system

Home Office and cross-government

Session 2024–2026
10 December 2025
HC 1517

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National Audit Office

2 December 2025

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The National Audit Office study team consisted of:

Gigs Banga, Lana Eekelschot, Ciaran Fitzsimons, Antonia Gracie, Hannah Kreczak, Sue Leveson and Rebecca Mavin, under the direction of Ruth Kelly.

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Summary

Background

1 Asylum is a form of protection available to anyone at risk of serious harm in their country of origin, through conflict or persecution. As a signatory to the Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol on international refugee prevention, the UK is committed to not returning individuals to a country where they face persecution.

2 The number of people seeking asylum represented around 11.4% of overall immigration to the UK in 2024 and around 0.16% as a share of total UK population in mid-2024. Since the second half of 2021, there has been a notable increase in the number of people seeking asylum in the UK. While volumes of asylum claims represent a relatively small proportion of overall migration, the current direct cost of supporting people seeking asylum is disproportionately high (£4.0 billion in 2024-25), driven by long delays and backlogs. Delays also have wider negative consequences – for vulnerable people, for community cohesion, and for local authority housing. Delays make it harder for the government to deliver a system that is fair, well managed and resistant to abuse.

3 In June 2023 we examined the Home Office’s asylum and protection transformation programme and concluded it was crucial that all parts of the end-to-end asylum system (including all relevant parts of the Home Office, Ministry of Justice and local authorities) worked together to manage demand effectively. We have also reported on aspects of the wider asylum system, with particular focus on asylum accommodation and support (see Figure 9 in Appendix Three).

4 In December 2024 the government committed to restore order to the asylum and immigration system: clear the asylum backlog and end the use of hotels; increase returns; and reduce small boat crossings. 1 In November 2025, the government set out proposed legal and policy changes. The proposals aim to reduce the flow of people seeking asylum in the UK, accelerate the removal of those who have no legal right to remain, and develop a new approach for admitting refugees through safe and legal routes. The proposals also include a policy shift towards granting refugee status on a temporary basis and extending the time required in the UK before indefinite settled status is granted to 20 years.2

Purpose and content of this report and our interactive system map

5 To achieve value for money in its management of asylum, the government needs to coordinate and manage across the complex end-to-end system. To scrutinise the government’s progress effectively, Parliament also needs an understanding of that end-to-end system, its resources and capabilities, its costs, and the legal and practical constraints on making changes to it. We therefore set out to create a systems map of the overall asylum system. This report draws on that work to cover:

definitions, roles and responsibilities of different government departments and public bodies, policy and financial context (Part One);

our observations about the key enablers needed for value for money in the asylum system and the challenges the government faces (see a summary in Figure 1);

a factual summary of what the government is currently doing and its latest proposals related to each of these challenges (Part Two); and

international comparator analysis on how other countries manage their asylum systems (Appendix Two).

6 We have also published a data visualisation based on our asylum system map. It represents visually the relationships and interactions across departmental and organisational boundaries in managing asylum. It shows the reader:

how people’s claims move through the system, what happens at each stage and where delays can occur;

how people are accommodated and supported while their claim is being processed;

the state of the system at a recent snapshot in time, including workload and where there are case backlogs;

the estimated costs across the whole system; and

our overall observations about key enablers, challenges in the current system and what the government is doing.

7 The visualisation is available on our website at: https://nao-mesh.shinyapps.io/Asylum_Systems_Data_Visualisation/.

Our scope and methodology

8 Our work covers the end-to-end system for managing asylum claims from the point at which someone makes a claim in the UK to the point at which they exit the asylum system, whether through a grant of protection, removal from the UK or otherwise reaching the end of the process. It does not cover dedicated asylum and protection schemes, such as the Homes for Ukraine Scheme or the three Afghanistan resettlement schemes.3 Nor does it cover irregular migration by individuals who do not make a claim for asylum. We do not include government activities designed to prevent or discourage illegal migration, though these are clearly relevant to the flows into the asylum system. Our work covered arrangements up to November 2025 but some aspects of the system are likely to change under the government’s recent proposed reforms.

9 We worked closely with operational and analytical experts in the Home Office, HM Courts & Tribunals Service, the Ministry of Justice, and representatives of local government. We also consulted with internal auditors and inspectors of the system, academic experts and stakeholder groups. During this work, we sought to understand the scope of improvement activity underway at strategic and operational levels, and we point to examples in the report, but this is not a comprehensive account of all such ongoing activities and we have not evaluated their impact. Appendix One sets out full details of our scope, analytical approach and methodology.

Who should read this?

10 This report and system visualisation will be useful for leaders in the asylum system and for officials working together across the departments and public bodies involved. It highlights the system constraints and challenges that we consider need addressing if the government collectively is to achieve an efficient and effective asylum system, and overall value for taxpayers’ money.

11 The report and visualisation will also be useful for Parliamentarians, to support effective scrutiny of the government’s proposals and accountability for its progress. As with all our work, it also allows interested members of the public to understand how their taxes are being spent and important services delivered. The work will inform future National Audit Office value for money audits in this area.

Concluding remarks

12 The system for processing asylum claims needs to be efficient, resilient to fluctuating demand, and demonstrably fair - otherwise it puts at risk not just public money, but the life chances of people seeking asylum and the government’s duties to them and to UK citizens. However, without a whole-system view and clear, agreed outcomes there has been no firm basis for the government departments and other bodies in the system to work together in pursuit of an efficient and sustainable system.

13 Our analysis shows how efforts to improve the system in recent years have often been short-term and narrowly focused on one area of the system in reaction to large backlogs and sharply increasing costs. Increases in speed of processing have sometimes come at the expense of the quality of decisions, and improvements in one area have shunted problems elsewhere. There has also been no realistic approach to the fact that in a significant number of cases it is not possible to return people whose claims have been refused. As a result, the system has incurred significant costs –  primarily on accommodation and support – that might have been avoided.

14 In the course of our system analysis work we have been encouraged by many examples of officials taking action to address the root causes of quality failures, understand and model parts of the system to improve productivity, and work across organisational boundaries. But these changes are somewhat piecemeal and not yet fully embedded. Moreover, the system is still hampered by a lack of robust, interoperable data to support high quality decision-making at each stage.

Recommendations

15 The government has recently set out a package of procedural and legal reforms it describes as “an entirely new asylum model”. Many of these will need time and Parliamentary approval to introduce and together they represent a complex programme for system change. In our future audit work we will be looking for evidence that the government is moving away from short-term, reactive fixes towards a sustainable whole-system approach and is paying attention to the key enablers of value for money that we have highlighted. Our recommendations are designed to help with that.

On taking a joined-up strategic approach to improve overall effectiveness and outcomes across the asylum system

a The government should, by the end of 2026, set out and present to Parliament a strategic plan for implementing the proposed new asylum model that supports long-term sustainability and reduces reliance on short-term, reactive responses that have resulted in avoidable costs and undesirable outcomes. It should then publish an annual assessment of progress. The plan should:

articulate high-level objectives for the asylum system as a whole;

acknowledge the fundamental constraints that contribute to people seeking asylum spending extended periods waiting in the system and clarify how it will optimise value for money and ensure effective operation given these constraints, recognising that some may not be fully resolvable and will require approaches that work around them; and

be explicit that to deliver the objectives and value for money in the long term, the government will need to ensure the asylum system is resilient and able to adapt to reasonably foreseeable volatility in demand.

b To deliver and sustain the new model, the government should establish a lasting framework of joined-up governance and accountability for value for money across the asylum system, supported by senior leadership. The framework should enable shared decision-making on policy and resource allocation, manage trade-offs based on overall effectiveness, and prevent pressures being shifted between parts of the system.

On building better system performance information for improvement and accountability

c The government should publish a broad and balanced set of system indicators that reflect outcomes, quality, and efficiency for people seeking asylum, taxpayers, and citizens. The government should report to Parliament on these indicators as part of its annual assessment in a way that:

provides transparency on the overall state of the asylum system, acknowledging factors outside government control;

shows progress over time by reporting year-on-year trends and explaining the drivers behind performance changes; and

shows how the government plans to close performance gaps and improve delivery of the objectives.

d The Home Office should work with the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) and other relevant partners in the asylum system to develop a blueprint and implementation plan for the data framework the asylum system needs in the long term. This will include understanding:

the current effect on outcomes, quality, efficiency and cost across the asylum system of data quality problems and the lack of a single reliable record on each person seeking asylum;

the causes of the key data quality problems and where in the system they arise; and

what technical, architectural or behavioural changes would be needed to address these problems and what those changes would cost.

On ensuring that future legislative, policy and management interventions have the best chance of improving value for money across the whole asylum system

e The government should:

bring together and build on the modelling and system design work from the Home Office and MoJ, alongside local authority analysis from MHCLG to provide a basis for joined-up policy design and decision-making; and

taking into account the Magenta Book principle of proportionate evaluation, ensure that interventions are supported by an evidence base and theory of change, including relevant international evidence where appropriate, an assessment of expected costs and benefits across the end-to-end asylum system, and an evaluation plan, and these are published unless there is an overriding reason why that would not be appropriate.

1 Plan for Change – Milestones for mission-led government, HM Government, 5 December 2024.

2 Restoring Order and Control, Secretary of State for the Home Department, CP 1418, November 2025.

3 Afghanistan Response Route (ARR); Afghan Relations and Assistance Policy (ARAP); Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS).

Part One

Introduction

1.1 This part explains asylum and the asylum system and provides the context for our systems mapping work by setting out:

volumes of asylum applications over time;

roles, responsibilities and legal duties of the organisations involved in the asylum system;

a timeline of relevant policy and legislation; and

a summary of government spending on asylum.

What is asylum?

1.2 Asylum is a form of protection available to anyone at risk of serious harm in their country of origin, through conflict or through persecution for reasons such as race, religion, gender or political viewpoint. The UK defines an asylum seeker as someone who makes a claim to be recognised as a refugee to receive protection and assistance. To apply for asylum in the UK, someone must be physically present in the country. They can claim asylum at any point during a stay in the UK, but the Home Office states that people should claim asylum as soon as reasonably practicable after arriving in the UK and at a ‘designated place’, such as a port of entry or Home Office location.

1.3 As a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention & 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, the UK has committed to not returning individuals to a country where they face persecution. Furthermore, the European Convention on Human Rights Article 3 prohibits removal to a country where there is a real risk of torture or inhuman treatment. This applies even if someone does not qualify as a refugee. Children under 18 who apply for asylum in the UK on their own, without a parent or legal guardian responsible for their care, are entitled to support and protection under the Children Act 1989, as updated by the Children and Young Persons Act 2008.

1.4 Once granted protection status, people have access rights to work, education, and basic welfare. While their claim is being considered, however, people who claim asylum in the UK are not normally allowed to work. They are instead provided with accommodation and support to meet their essential living needs if they would otherwise be destitute. As at December 2025, the weekly allowance for an adult seeking asylum is £9.95 in catered, supported accommodation, or £49.18 if in self-catered accommodation.

1.5 The Home Office may grant permission to work to people whose asylum claim has been outstanding for more than 12 months through no fault of their own, and there is a limited list of skilled job types in which they may work.4 The Home Office also encourages people to volunteer while their claim is being considered. The Home Office is seeking to improve the quality of its data on the number of people it grants permission to work, which it does not currently publish. Across EU states, people seeking asylum must be allowed to access the labour market no later than nine months after their application. In Portugal, asylum seekers are allowed to work immediately, while in the Netherlands they may do so after six months, in certain occupations (see Appendix Two).

1.6 The number of people seeking asylum in the UK was particularly high in the early 2000s. This was due to a large number of people fleeing persecution from countries with conflicts and political instability, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. Since the second half of 2021 there has been another notable increase. The latest year is the highest on record (Figure 2).

What do we mean by the asylum system?

1.7 The Home Office, Ministry of Justice (MoJ), HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) and local authorities all have responsibility in the wider asylum system (Figure 3).

The Home Office is responsible for ensuring the UK complies with its legal commitments to people seeking asylum. It makes decisions on claims, manages intake, and provides support and accommodation for people seeking asylum who are destitute. It is also responsible for enforcing the return of people who have been refused asylum and have exhausted their right to appeal, which may include detention, and for facilitating voluntary returns.

The MoJ is responsible for overseeing the justice system and HMCTS administers appeals and tribunals, working with the independent judiciary. The MoJ is also responsible for the provision of legal aid, which is administered by the Legal Aid Agency (LAA).

Local authorities provide support services to people in the asylum system, including social care and children’s services. Local authorities have a statutory duty to accommodate an unaccompanied child, and these children are entitled to the same support as any other looked after child, regardless of their immigration status. They also have statutory duties to assist people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, which includes those who receive a positive decision on their asylum claim and are required to leave asylum accommodation. There are some limitations to the services that some people seeking asylum, who generally have ‘no recourse to public funds’ can access.5

Legislative and policy context

1.8 Over the last two decades the asylum system has seen increasingly frequent policy and legislative changes, with particular focus in recent years on interventions aimed at reducing the number of people making claims for asylum after entering the country illegally (Figure 4).

1.9 On 1 September 2025, the then Home Secretary made an oral statement to the House of Commons setting out proposed interventions aimed at: disrupting people smuggling; reducing the use of hotel accommodation; speeding up the adjudication of appeals; and improving enforcement and returns. She also announced the immediate temporary suspension of refugee family reunion, ahead of proposed reforms.6 The government’s November 2025 policy statement on asylum and returns built on this, proposing policy and legal changes intended to reduce intake and increase removals, many of which will require Parliamentary approval.7

1.10 All such legislative and policy changes have resource implications across the asylum system. They may be followed by updates to case management systems, operational instructions and training for Home Office caseworkers and HMCTS staff, alongside further judicial training and additional information for appeal judges to take into account. Changes can also require amendments to legal aid legislation and associated regulations as well as to Legal Aid Agency contracts and processes.

1.11 Other European countries have experienced similar challenges to the UK in managing asylum claims, including backlogs in caseworking and appeals and accommodation pressure. There are many parallels between the approaches they have taken and those in the UK, and a few differences, particularly on rules about the right of people seeking asylum to work. We have summarised approaches in a selection of comparable countries in Appendix Two.

Government spending on the asylum system

1.12 There is no overall cross-government budget for the asylum system. The Home Office allocates a specific budget for certain asylum-related costs, such as accommodation and support. Caseworking staff costs are recorded within other budgets as actual spend, while the Home Office estimates costs associated with appeals and detention. Spending by other parts of government is also incorporated into their wider budgets for the justice system, housing, education or other types of support. The largest contributing element of the costs is direct spending on asylum support, on which the Home Office spent around £4.0 billion in 2024-25 (£4.7 billion in 2023-24). The main elements of this are grants to local authorities (around £883 million, including for unaccompanied children seeking asylum) and direct spending on accommodation (around £2.7 billion); the remainder is cash support and other asylum-related costs.

1.13 Actual spending by local authorities on supporting people seeking asylum is poorly understood. In 2024, the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG), which is responsible for local authority funding, carried out an exercise to gather asylum-related cost data. The exercise found that local authorities face additional costs for people seeking asylum, including on education, language support, integration services and social care, that are not covered sufficiently by existing funding arrangements. While councils could not calculate a cost per asylum seeker, MHCLG concluded that the asylum grant funding structure should be updated to more effectively address the costs incurred by local authorities.

1.14 Based on actual costs, we estimate that the total Home Office and MoJ spending on asylum is around £4.9 billion for 2024-25. This includes key areas of spend as shown in Figure 5. This figure does not fully capture all costs associated with the asylum system, particularly those incurred by local authorities which are difficult to calculate.

1.15 In the four years to 2024-25, the Home Office did not include in its Main Estimate funding equivalent to its full asylum support forecast. This was on the understanding that asylum support forecasts were highly volatile, efforts to improve efficiency were ongoing, and that the Home Office would need to clearly justify to HM Treasury that it had taken steps to manage down any asylum pressure before additional funding would be provided through the annual Supplementary Estimates process. In November 2023, the Home Affairs Select Committee expressed its concern that the Department was not able to budget accurately for asylum costs, suggesting it had “lost control of the asylum budget.” 8

1.16 At the June 2025 Spending Review, HM Treasury’s funding settlement for the Home Office set out spending plans on asylum support as a separate figure for the first time. This provided improved transparency over spending plans for asylum from 2025-26 onwards, including the government’s plans for savings. It also introduced stricter financial oversight arrangements. The Home Office is required to continue to provide monthly updates to HM Treasury on forecast asylum costs, including the actions it is taking to remain within its Spending Review settlement and how any underspends are being used. It must also monitor and evaluate the impact of its asylum transformation and accommodation programmes. The Home Office’s settlement included £200 million of funding to transform the asylum system and the government expects reforms to reduce asylum costs by at least £1 billion per year by 2028-29 compared with 2024-25.9

1.17 Against this background, the next part of the report sets out our observations about the key challenges to address in the asylum system, to enable sustained improvement in value for money.

4 Skilled Worker visa: immigration salary list - GOV.UK

5 No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) may apply to people with permission to enter or stay in the UK, or to those without permission, like people seeking asylum. It means they cannot normally access most benefits, tax credits, or housing assistance provided by local authorities.

6 Oral statement to Parliament, Strengthening border security and reforms to the asylum system, published 1 September 2025.

7 Restoring Order and Control, Secretary of State for the Home Department, CP 1418, November 2025.

8 Home Affairs Committee, Oral evidence: Work of the Home Office, HC 356, 29 November 2023.

9 HM Treasury, Spending Review 2025, CP 1336, 11 June 2025.

Part Two

Key challenges to managing the asylum system effectively

2.1 This part sets out our observations about four key enablers we consider essential to support an effective and value for money asylum system. These are also illustrated in our interactive system map. For each key enabler, we explain here:

why it is important;

the challenges that need to be addressed in the asylum system; and

relevant actions the government has in progress or has announced.

2.2 Other countries have experienced similar challenges in managing their asylum systems and we have set out a summary of their approaches at Appendix Two. We highlight comparisons where relevant in this part.

A whole-system approach

Why is it important?

2.3 Our work over many years auditing the government’s operational delivery of services has shown that taking a whole-system approach is one of the most important foundations for success.10 In a whole-system approach, organisations across the system work collaboratively to establish a shared understanding of objectives and service outcomes. They agree ways of working to make consistent trade-offs between conflicting objectives and priorities in different parts of the system, using the likely impact on outcomes as the basis for trade-offs. This is often difficult, needing time and investment from senior leaders across central government departments, the centre of government (HM Treasury and Cabinet Office), local delivery bodies and non-governmental organisations.11

2.4 When it is done well:

there is a focus on overall effectiveness and outcomes, rather than what is good for one part of the system;

there is a shared understanding of risks that cross operational boundaries;

those responsible for policy and operational delivery are working together to understand the capacity of organisations in different parts of the system to absorb more work; and

they consider the impact of proposed policy changes on overall efficiency and quality, not just on activity completed in each silo.

How does this relate to the asylum system?

2.5 There is no single point of accountability for outcomes or governance structure for the end-to-end asylum system. The parts of government involved in asylum each have their own wider objectives, distinct legal duties, statutory responsibilities and budgets (Figure 3 and Figure 5). However, the lack of a whole-system approach means that the government has not set out the overall outcomes it aims to achieve through the asylum system, nor agreed shared objectives across the different bodies involved.

2.6 The system has had to adapt over time to changing volumes of demand and changing government policies on asylum (Figure 2 and Figure 4). But interventions to improve the management of demand have tended to be reactive and focused on fixing an urgent problem in one part of the system only, such as intake or initial decisions, without a clear view of the effects on other parts. For example:

The government’s commitment in December 2022 to clear the legacy backlog (claims made before the Nationality and Borders Act came into force) by December 2023 led to faster initial asylum decisions. In 2023, the Home Office made more than four times as many initial asylum decisions as in 2022, mainly in the second half of 2023, which saw nearly 76,000 initial asylum decisions made. However, this shifted pressure into the appeals stage where constraints on legal and judicial capacity created another backlog.

Efforts in 2023 to clear the backlog of initial asylum decisions also led to a notable increase in individuals who had been granted protection status presenting to local authorities as homeless and requiring support, heightened by the requirement to leave Home Office-provided accommodation within 28 days.

The Illegal Migration Act 2023 (IMA) introduced a new duty to remove people entering the UK illegally and added a provision that declared that asylum claims made by those people were inadmissible, and that they could not be granted permission to remain in the UK. The then government put this into practice in July 2023 but, because its Rwanda scheme for removals was not live and it could not remove those people, the effect was to pause asylum decision-making in respect of individuals who had arrived in the UK illegally since 7 March 2023. Decision-making resumed for this cohort in July 2024, when the government passed regulations that removed the retrospective effect of the IMA. This created an additional backlog in initial asylum decisions, as the Home Office was now required to make a decision in the paused cases.

2.7 Efficiency in each part of the asylum system depends on casework and data about people flowing smoothly from the previous stage. But a siloed structure means there are weak incentives for officials in one part of the system to actively support efficiency in other parts, which can lead to rework, delays, and costs:

Home Office asylum case progression teams receive some cases that are not ready for review, often because of insufficient or missing evidence from earlier stages. This requires additional documentation or a second interview, introducing delays.

Delays in the Home Office providing information to the tribunals to support appeals, or late notice withdrawals by the Home Office, can lead to inefficient use of tribunal capacity and disrupt case scheduling. Delays can also be caused by individuals making appeals or their legal representatives not complying with the tribunal’s requirements, for example by not providing documentation in a timely manner.

Inconsistent engagement between the Home Office, asylum accommodation providers and local authorities can lead to competition for the same accommodation resources or tension over accommodation choices. Different parts of the public sector require similar types of accommodation supply to fulfil various statutory obligations. This can lead to competition in some cases as demand for the same stock rises.

Our 2024 investigation into the Home Office’s plans to establish large sites to accommodate people seeking asylum and reduce the use of hotels found that the Home Office had faced legal challenges regarding its obligations on the grounds of planning regulations and the impact on local people.12

2.8 There is also no systematic approach for capturing learning through the stages of the asylum process. We noted that Home Office teams do carry out ad hoc reviews to look for patterns in appeal outcomes and learning for staff, and caseworkers are encouraged to attend tribunals, but there is no formalised approach for learning from upheld appeals.

What is the government doing?

2.9 The government has recently set out a package of procedural and legal reforms it describes as “an entirely new asylum model”. Many of these will need time and Parliamentary approval to introduce and together they represent a complex programme for system change. Creating a truly effective whole-system approach and successfully implementing the new asylum model will require system leadership, political support and collaborative decision making by the bodies involved. They will need a willingness to test, understand and learn from the impacts of the changes on the whole system. Without these elements, there is a risk that the government reverts to a pattern of counterproductive quick fixes as we reported in 2023, and before that in 2009, when we examined the New Asylum Model, itself a response to a previous backlog.13 The government has in train, or has announced, some relevant actions and improvements. For example:

The Home Office has established a new Asylum Group (previously called the Asylum Taskforce) to work with other departments and the centre of government. The Home Office appointed a Director General to lead the Asylum Group in November 2025.

The Home Office is building its capability in system design, process modelling and evaluation. It is using these approaches to understand better how people’s cases flow through the system and the potential impact of policy proposals.

The Home Office and HM Courts & Tribunal Service (HMCTS) are working to improve information sharing and collaboration, including how they share forecasts and assumptions to improve planning.

The 2025 spending review included spending commitments in different parts of government to help reduce the use of asylum hotels. As well as £200 million for Home Office reforms, there were commitments to increase asylum appeals capacity, and funding more generally to increase the supply of temporary accommodation in communities.

Since 2019, the Home Office has added quality review stages to test how well-founded its decisions are before going to appeal. The aim is to reduce unnecessary appeals work and improve outcomes, although late-notice withdrawals can still lead to inefficient use of tribunal capacity and disrupt case scheduling.

Addressing fundamental barriers

Why is it important?

2.10 To deliver value for money, the asylum system needs to be able to process and decide claims in a fair, efficient and timely way and implement those decisions, including enforcing removals. Lengthy delays put at risk the welfare and life chances of people seeking asylum, represent an unproductive use of taxpayers’ money on accommodation and support, and erode public confidence in the system’s fairness and effectiveness.

How does this relate to the asylum system?

2.11 There are clear opportunities to enhance the efficiency and quality of the current system for processing asylum claims. However, without either removing some of the fundamental barriers to progressing claims, or designing the system to take account of them, some people seeking asylum will continue to remain in the system for extended periods. This prevents the system from operating as it should and undermines the government’s ability to achieve value for money. Those without valid claims may also exploit these aspects of the system to stay in the UK when they are not genuinely in need of asylum.

2.12 A key factor that stops the system from operating as intended is the inability to promptly remove some people who have exhausted their appeal rights but do not leave voluntarily. Where detention is used for the purpose of removal, legislation requires that the Home Office should only use it when there is a realistic prospect of removal within a ‘reasonable’ period of time. Where this is not possible, some individuals remain within the asylum system, with their cases unresolved. The reasons why a failed asylum seeker cannot be removed include:

That the UK has limited bilateral agreements with some countries on returns. This applies to some countries from which asylum claims are normally certified as ‘clearly unfounded’ - even where agreements exist, compliance by foreign authorities can be limited; and

That some individuals do not have verifiable identity documents and cannot obtain them from their country of origin.

This leads to significant expenditure on support and accommodation or detention, without progress towards resolution of the case. In our sample of 5000 people who claimed asylum in January 2023, we found that the claims of more than a third (41%) of people in our sample remain open but are not awaiting an appeal decision or the outcome of further submissions to the Home Office. These claims are not being progressed, and the individuals involved have not been removed from the UK.14

2.13 Another feature of the current system is the potential for repeated claims and appeals processes. UK law protects the right to appeal against a refused asylum decision through a statutory process involving an independent tribunal, and evidence from the Home Office suggests that, in 2024-25, 68% of people who received a refusal at initial decision went on to lodge an appeal.15 In addition, there is no limit on the number of times an individual may make further submissions to the Home Office with new evidence that might change the outcome of their claim, even late in the process or after appeal rights against the initial claim are exhausted. Further submissions provide a further right of appeal, even if an individual’s appeal rights had previously been exhausted.

2.14 The right to appeal a decision that an applicant or their legal representative feels is incorrect, and the ability to provide new information to Home Office decision-makers, are important in ensuring fairness in the asylum system. Moreover, there are several legitimate reasons why repeated submissions and appeals might occur. They may reflect genuinely new information or valid changes in an individual’s circumstances, or may be due to the complexity of the system and the difficulty applicants face in engaging with it. However, some individuals whose claims have been refused, and who have been found to have no right to asylum, can deliberately use further submissions or new appeals to frustrate their removal and prolong the amount of time they spend in the UK.

2.15 Frequent changes in policy on asylum have been a feature of recent years (paragraph 1.8). Global instability also means that the government’s guidance on which countries are deemed safe can change. Both types of change alter asylum claim admissibility rules and may overturn an initial decision by the time it reaches tribunal. Finally, some types of claims are particularly subject to delays, which can prolong the process for several years – including age disputes, referrals for investigation of modern slavery and new rights of appeal for fresh claims.

2.16 All the above system features can prolong the time that individuals spend in the asylum system. There is also a reinforcement effect between these features and process inefficiencies. Process delays make it more likely that the individual is deemed to have established a life in the UK or that the circumstances in their country of origin have changed, which may change the ultimate outcome on their claim.16 In all cases, long delays waiting in the asylum system create uncertainty and hardship for individuals, extend the time in which they are unable to work and participate in society, and make integration for people granted asylum harder.

2.17 Improving any complex public service requires open discussion of the problems, innovation to challenge current thinking, and taking well-managed risks.17 In the case of the asylum system, addressing the obstacles to improvement, or adjusting the system to function effectively around these obstacles, will also need political leadership and detailed work to ensure that any changes balance the duties, rights and objectives of those involved in the system. Ultimately some changes will require Parliamentary support. The experience of other countries could also be instructive – for example some choose to offset the cost and wider impact of supporting people seeking asylum by allowing them greater access to the labour market (Appendix Two).

What is the government doing?

2.18 We noted that the Home Office is working to target its immigration enforcement activity towards people it considers it has the best chance of successfully removing from the UK, and in November 2025 it announced several new measures. It is too early to judge whether these efforts add up to an effective approach to resolving the barriers to removal or adapting the asylum system to operate effectively despite the presence of people who cannot be removed. The measures the government already has under way are:

The UK-France returns treaty and pilot ‘one in, one out’ scheme. The Home Office told us that an objective of this scheme is to demonstrate whether a new bilateral approach to returning people arriving by small boats whose asylum claims have been declared inadmissible to the UK system will work in practice and could be scaled up to include more partner countries. The Home Office agreed its approach with HM Treasury and incorporated a formal evaluation of the pilot to assess its early impact.

Arrangements with Iraq and Moldova and a joint communiqué with Vietnam to strengthen cooperation on returns.

The UK, alongside its Five Eyes partners, has committed to adjusting visa access for countries that refuse or delay accepting the return of their nationals. The government has told Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Namibia that if they do not comply with international rules and norms on returns it will impose visa penalties on them.

Increasing the use of AI facial age estimation technology with the aim of strengthening age assessment.

2.19 Newly proposed measures yet to be implemented, some of which will require Parliamentary approval, include:

Measures to enforce removals to countries which are judged to be safe, and to remove families with failed claims if their home country is judged to be safe.

Introducing a faster track for appeals assessed as having low prospects of success, moving to a single right of appeal for each claim, and tightening the rules on further submissions so that only evidence that is materially different from that considered in the original decision can be raised.

Legislation to reform the interpretation of human rights and modern slavery protections and prevent their misuse by people not entitled to protection.

Measures that seek to increase contributions by people seeking asylum to the cost of their support, where they have assets or income. The government has not announced changes to the list of permitted occupations for people seeking asylum awaiting a decision.

Timely, robust, shared data

Why is it important?

2.20 We frequently find across government that robust data are not a priority and that there is a culture of tolerating and working around data that are not fit for purpose. It can be challenging to make the case for long-term investments to improve the quality and sharing of data. And government tends to be poor at monitoring the time and costs involved in sorting poor-quality, disorganised data, which exacerbates that challenge.18 Our work on complex cross-government systems also shows how important it is for leaders to have an understanding, based on a shared set of trusted data, of what is happening across the whole system and why.19

How does this relate to the asylum system?

2.21 Poor quality data and workarounds have been a long-standing characteristic of the asylum system. In 2023 we reported that the Home Office had been slow to implement its new case management system, Atlas. At the time, asylum caseworkers were using two systems to enter or update the same information. The Home Office has now moved fully to Atlas for asylum case management (as well as all other migration and borders casework), but the transition has been complex and there is further to go on data quality, system functionality and data sharing with other parts of government.

2.22 The Home Office has faced significant challenges with transferring and merging its legacy data, improving functionality and upskilling staff to create a single reliable record in Atlas for each person seeking asylum. The process of resolving identities and linking records across systems is ongoing. The lack of a single, complete, reliable record of all the necessary data on each person seeking asylum is a constraint on the efficiency and quality of decision-making and the Home Office’s ability to manage and forecast demand across the system. On our visits to Home Office processing centres we observed that:

errors or omissions in the data recorded in Atlas about people at the point they make their asylum claim was leading to time-consuming follow-up later by decision-making staff;

staff were continuing to refer back to the closed Case Information Database (CID) system that Atlas has replaced and there was evidence of case identifying numbers from that system still being used; and

some teams used additional spreadsheets to help them manage their flow of work because Atlas does not yet provide the functionality they need.

2.23 There is no unique asylum case identifier shared by Home Office, HMCTS and local authority systems. The Home Office and HMCTS have developed arrangements to link applicant data between Atlas and the new HMCTS appeals case management system (CCD). However, we saw problems with data sharing across the system making it impossible to directly track individual cases through the entire asylum process:

A lack of standardised information flow between local authorities and from the Home Office and accommodation providers to local authorities means that councils are not always notified when people move into or out of their areas, and may not be notified promptly when people who have been granted asylum move out of asylum accommodation. This hampers the ability of local authorities to provide appropriate, proactive support or to plan and allocate resources effectively.

Information sharing between the Home Office, local authorities, accommodation providers, and other relevant parties such as the police about safeguarding and risk management is not always effective. Local authorities have a statutory duty to safeguard adults seeking asylum living in their areas. However, both the Home Office and representatives of local authorities told us that it was difficult to share information consistently and effectively. This is made more complicated by the fact that there is no standardised process for sharing information – including about safeguarding and other needs – with and between local authorities and other local services. The Home Office is taking steps to improve this, including by developing a standardised referral form and through the development of a Quality Assurance Framework for its safeguarding work.

2.24 More broadly, we recommended in 2023 that the Home Office routinely collect the data necessary to understand the flow of demand through the whole asylum system, and the impact of policy changes on people seeking asylum. In this audit, we found several examples of data that could help the government better understand outcomes within the asylum system that were not routinely being collected, or which they could not provide. For example:

the Home Office was unable to provide data on the number of people in the asylum system who were not receiving any form of state support or state-funded accommodation;

the Home Office could not provide data on the outcomes of further submissions;

the Home Office did not hold complete data on the number of people who had absconded from the asylum system, or the total number of people currently subject to some form of enforcement action, or on all unsuccessful removals and their causes;

the Ministry of Justice could not provide data on the total number of cases received by the Upper Tribunal, although it told us they have a manual system in place for the Upper Tribunal to collate and share management information on a four week retrospective basis; and

the MoJ did not hold reliable data on the level of repeated appeals.

What is the government doing?

2.25 The Home Office told us it has assessed the maturity of its data on asylum and is using the results to develop a data strategy which reflects the Government Data Quality Framework.20 It has a programme of work planned that will focus on improving data input quality, building staff’s trust in Atlas, and establishing robust data controls. At the same time, the Home Office is continuing to make engineering improvements to the underlying architecture of Atlas.

2.26 The Home Office also told us it is working to improve data flows to its partners in other parts of the asylum system. At various stages of development, it has introduced:

a Place-Based Visibility Tool, which provides local authorities with data to support asylum accommodation planning and service delivery;

a tool to extract data to transfer to HMCTS;

a process for sharing information when asylum-seeking children move schools which is being finalised with the Department for Education; and

a Property Management Platform, which is intended to integrate with Atlas and provide real time location data on asylum seekers in supported accommodation by the end of 2026.

A resilient, strategic approach to capacity and workforce

Why is it important?

2.27 In efficient systems that deliver sustainable value for money, work is done right first time, work moves through the process at the pace needed to meet service users’ needs without creating backlogs, and hand-offs between different people and steps in the process are seamless.21 The asylum system is subject to fluctuating demand and significant peaks driven by external factors. It is therefore even more important to understand how cases flow through the whole system, address capacity constraints and design in flexibility to demand, while designing out the causes of failure, inefficiency and rework.

How does this relate to the asylum system?

2.28 There are several capacity constraints that limit the effective functioning of the asylum system, and addressing them is challenging, particularly in the context of fiscal restraint, housing shortages and limits on civil service recruitment. Each of the systems within the asylum system is under pressure more widely, not just on managing asylum (Figure 6). These system capacity constraints around judicial capacity, case-management and accommodation are paralleled in other countries. We noted similarities in approaches as well as some differences that may offer learning for the UK (Appendix Two).

2.29 In recent years the Home Office has been working to improve the productivity of its casework, moving away over time from individual caseworkers taking cases through their whole journey towards a chain of process elements, each with dedicated staff resources, productivity targets and management oversight. In 2021, it started developing the asylum and protection transformation programme to deliver a system “that is fair, supportive and efficient, where decisions made are right first time and customers in need of protection receive it quickly, and all are treated with dignity and respect”. The programme included streams of improvement work across all parts of the Home Office process.22

2.30 However, we found that progress with the transformation programme’s broad-based improvements has been undermined by the need to respond to urgent political priorities and rapid policy changes that focus on one part of the system only (such as reducing illegal entry, speeding up initial decisions, or reducing the use of hotels) (paragraph 1.8). For example:

Increased demand for caseworker capacity to tackle a backlog of claims awaiting decisions meant the Home Office relaxed its recruitment arrangements and some of the people it recruited were ill-suited to making complex decisions on asylum cases. This has had an impact on decision quality, and our work suggests it has generated further demand and problems in other areas of the system, including the tribunal system.

We found that the Home Office’s attempt to acquire the Northeye site within just a few months of adopting it onto the non-detained asylum accommodation programme led it to cut corners and make a series of poor decisions. This resulted in it purchasing a site that was unsuitable for that original purpose, and it paying more for it than it needed to.23

At the time of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, the MoJ approved the recruitment of additional judges for the Upper Tribunal, but this additional capacity was not needed when policy changed. However, some of this capacity has been flexibly deployed to the First-tier Tribunal.

What is the government doing?

2.31 Home Office operational leaders told us they had captured significant learning from the experience of rapidly surging activity to tackle the case backlog in 2023, in terms of understanding the drivers of efficient case flow, the factors that affect decision quality, and how they are linked. The Home Office has returned to more rigorous recruitment procedures for caseworkers and implemented a quality improvement plan. It is focused on improving technical support to caseworkers, addressing their knowledge gaps through targeted coaching, and bringing together feedback from appeals to improve decision quality. The Home Office is also trialling the use of AI tools to summarise lengthy case notes to save time for caseworkers. At the same time, caseworkers we spoke to were frustrated by continuing problems with data quality and interoperability (paragraph 2.21). Decision quality remains a challenge, with 42% of sampled decisions in a rolling twelve months to May 2025 having significant or fail errors.

2.32 The Ministry of Justice is considering a range of ways to improve judicial capacity as well as recruitment, including working with the judiciary to facilitate judges from other First-tier Tribunal chambers to sit in asylum cases. It has also introduced a legal officer role to support judges and make better use of their time. Legal officers assist with case management and preparation, helping cases reach hearings efficiently and ensuring court time is used effectively. This support also helps reduce the number of adjournments caused by poor evidence quality, saving judicial time.

2.33 The Ministry of Justice is taking action to support the capacity of the legal aid market, including fee uplifts to improve the financial viability of asylum and immigration civil legal aid work and incentivise providers to take up and expand their legal aid work.

2.34 The Home Office is exploring a variety of short-, medium- and longer-term accommodation options, such as former student accommodation and government properties, to reduce the use of asylum hotels. We also noted that the Home Office has made better use of the accommodation capacity it has purchased. It sought to maximise available space – for example by converting double hotel rooms to twin rooms, and other large spaces (such as conference rooms) into dormitories. This required the Home Office to gather detailed information on bed spaces and room-sharing constraints (such as medical and safeguarding issues), and analyse data on empty rooms, enabling conversations with providers about bringing them back into use. For dispersal accommodation, the Home Office worked with providers to digitally map the estate and optimise its usage in real time.24

2.35 If the government’s most recently announced reforms succeed in moving cases through the asylum system faster, for example by reducing repeated appeals, this could relieve pressure on decision-making and judicial resources.25 However, the set of proposed changes is complex, and the challenge is to set out a sustainable approach to capacity and capability for the asylum system based on an understanding of how people and casework flow through the whole system. Otherwise, there is a risk of unintended consequences for already stretched systems, as well as for wider government priorities such as homelessness. The latest announcements include:

The creation of a new independent appeals body focused on immigration and asylum appeals, with statutory powers to prioritise cases from those in asylum accommodation and foreign national offenders. The new body will be staffed by professionally trained adjudicators, with safeguards to ensure high standards. The government has not yet announced further details of how this body will be resourced or the implications for existing appeals capacity. In November the government indicated that, once established, this body will also provide people seeking asylum with independent legal advice.

A change in the length of time for which successful asylum seekers are granted leave to remain, from five years to 30 months. It will be renewed only if the individual is still considered in need of protection. The implications of these more frequent reviews of right to remain on the Home Office’s case management capacity or on the appeals system is not yet clear.

Removing the legal obligation to support people seeking asylum who would otherwise be destitute, replacing it with a discretionary power where support will depend on people seeking asylum meeting certain conditions.

Measures designed to encourage people seeking asylum to take up work, where they have the right to do so, and contribute to their support costs.

Expanding detention capacity for people who have been refused asylum and are awaiting removal from the UK.

10 Comptroller and Auditor General, Lessons learned: Smarter delivery – improving operational capability to provide better public services, Session 2024-25, HC 952, National Audit Office, 18 June 2025.

11 Improving operational delivery in government: A good practice guide for senior leaders, National Audit Office, March 2021.

12 Comptroller and Auditor General, Investigation into asylum accommodation, Session 2023-24, HC 635, National Audit Office, 20 March 2024.

13 Comptroller and Auditor General, Management of Asylum Applications by the UK Border Agency, Session 2008-09, HC 124, National Audit Office, 23 January 2009.

14 Our data visualisation is available here: https://nao-mesh.shinyapps.io/Asylum_Systems_Data_Visualisation/

15 The Home Office noted that appeals data is still in the process of transitioning to the new Atlas caseworking system and that there are ongoing issues with data quality in this area, meaning that this figure is subject to change.

16 Data on appeals means that it is not possible to see how many cases involving an asylum claim were eventually granted on Article 8 of the Human Rights Act (1998), which protects an individual’s right to private and family life.

17 Comptroller and Auditor General, Lessons learned: Smarter delivery – improving operational capability to provide better public services, Session 2024-25, HC 952, National Audit Office, 18 June 2025.

18 Comptroller and Auditor General, Challenges in using data across government, Session 2017–2019, HC 2220, National Audit Office, June 2019.

19 Improving operational delivery in government: A good practice guide for senior leaders, National Audit Office, March 2021 page 8.

20 The Government Data Quality Framework - GOV.UK, published 3 December 2020.

21 Comptroller and Auditor General, Lessons learned: Smarter delivery – improving operational capability to provide better public services, Session 2024-25, HC 952, National Audit Office, 18 June 2025.

22 Comptroller and Auditor General, The asylum and protection transformation programme, Session 2022-23, HC 1375, National Audit Office, 16 June 2023 - Figure 7.

23 Comptroller and Auditor General, Investigation into the acquisition of the Northeye site for asylum accommodation, Session 2024-25, HC 305, National Audit Office, 15 November 2024; Comptroller and Auditor General, The Home Office’s asylum accommodation contracts, Session 2024-25, HC 874, National Audit Office, 7 May 2025.

24 Comptroller and Auditor General, The Home Office’s asylum accommodation contracts, Session 2024-25, HC 874, National Audit Office, 7 May 2025.

25 Asylum and immigration – briefing note, Home Office, 2 September 2025; RESTORING ORDER AND CONTROL, a statement on the government’s asylum and returns policy, Secretary of State for the Home Department, CP 1418, November 2025.

Appendix One

Our audit approach

Our scope

1 We took as our starting point for this work our conclusion in 2023 that all parts of the end-to-end asylum system must work together to manage demand effectively. We set out to map the end-to-end asylum system in a visual, interactive way that would aid transparency, accountability and value for money decisions.

2 Our work covers the end-to-end system for managing asylum claims from the point at which someone makes a claim in the UK to the point at which they exit the asylum system - through a grant of protection, removal from the UK or otherwise reaching the end of the process. The work is presented in the form of an interactive data visualisation based on a systems map of the asylum system, and a covering report to Parliament.

3 We bring together data and insights from across the asylum system in an analysis of the journey of people seeking asylum, the flow and quality of data, and the interactions between organisations. We carried out the work to support this report and the data visualisation between April and October 2025 and it covers arrangements up to November 2025, but some aspects of the system are likely to change under the government’s proposed reforms. The report includes factual updates on the government’s evolving approach, but we do not conclude on their value for money.

4 This work does not cover dedicated asylum and protection schemes such as the Homes for Ukraine Scheme or the three Afghanistan resettlement schemes. Nor does it cover irregular migration by individuals who do not make a claim for asylum. We do not include government activities designed to prevent or discourage illegal migration, though these are clearly relevant to the flows into the asylum system.

Our overall analytical approach

5 Our overall approach was iterative and exploratory, and involved two parallel streams of work – system mapping and capturing audit insights about the asylum system – supported by a range of methods (Figure 7). Our team combined audit and analytical skills and was also supported by NAO experts on operational delivery, data and digital transformation. As we pursued our various audit methods, we synthesised, analysed and refined what we learned about the system in an iterative way, including through a phase in which we tested our emerging findings with officials in the audited bodies and stakeholders. We also identified additional datasets and questions to ask as we did so. In this way we developed both the data visualisation (which contains our system mapping work) and the covering report (which contains our key system observations) in tandem. See Our evidence base below for more detail on each of our methods.

Development of the interactive data visualisation

6 We tested a range of proprietary visualisation and presentation tools before deciding to use our in-house programmers to build the systems map and to present the results using the scrolling ‘story’ approach. We built the data visualisation using the programming language R, specifically the Shiny and VisNetwork packages. We used the VisNetwork package to build and customise the system maps; Shiny adds the interactivity to allow the user to scroll and click on to specific parts of the visualisation. We tested our data visualisation on a mixed group of NAO staff who are not subject matter experts to help refine its user interface.

7 We often create simple system maps as part of our audits of government activities. Less frequently we have been able to do more sophisticated process mining analysis to understand the flow of cases through a system, including the time taken for different activities, how resources are used and where bottlenecks occur. We considered process mining of the asylum system but found that it was not feasible for data quality reasons.

Our evidence base

Interviews with government departments

8 Between March and November 2025, we conducted over 50 interviews with staff from government departments to understand their teams’ roles in the asylum system, their challenges and successes in recent years, and how they have responded to changes within the system. These discussions were primarily with officials from the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), but we also spoke to staff from the Department for Education (DfE), the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), and HM Treasury. We met with staff working on forecasting and modelling, policy development, operational teams, stakeholder engagement, data and management information, and enforcement. We also spoke to a number of teams covering specialist topic areas such as legal aid, appeals and litigation, caseworking, asylum-seeking children and community cohesion. Interviews were mainly conducted online. We used the findings from these discussions to enhance our understanding of different areas of the system, and in the development of our thematic findings.

Discussions with other auditors and inspectors

9 While developing and refining our understanding of the asylum system and the emerging findings of this audit, we worked with other arm’s-length bodies from across the government with a role in the system, including the Government Internal Audit Agency, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, and HM Inspectorate of Prisons. These conversations enabled us to further contextualise our work by learning more about the recent findings of other bodies carrying out evaluative work within the asylum system, and to enrich and refine our findings by testing them with others who are familiar with the system.

Discussions with system stakeholders and other experts

10 We held interviews and workshops with ten stakeholder organisations working in and around the asylum system. We identified stakeholders through desk research and, in some cases, discussion with government departments, and contacted them inviting them to contribute to the audit. We held discussions with:

representatives from the regional Strategic Migration Partnerships;

the Local Government Association;

the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities;

the Law Society (including the Immigration Law Committee);

the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association;

the Refugee Council; and

the British Red Cross.

In addition, we spoke to the following organisations which have published reports and research on the asylum system, to understand more about their findings:

the Migration Observatory (based at the University of Oxford);

the Institute for Government; and

Migration Watch.

11 Preliminary discussions with all ten groups covered topics such as, but not limited to, how effectively the asylum system works; the impact of policy changes; the experiences of people who have claimed asylum; and the impact of government policy on local authorities and legal practitioners. Later in the process, we tested our high-level findings and a draft version of our data visualisation with some stakeholder groups.

Financial and data analysis

12 In our analysis, we have drawn on information from the Immigration System Statistics published by the Home Office, which provide data on the number of people claiming asylum and their outcomes. We have also used data from the Tribunals Statistics Quarterly published by MoJ, which include information on the number of asylum-related appeals made and their outcomes. Wherever possible, we have used data up to the end of March 2025, to ensure consistency. However, it is not always possible to make direct comparisons between datasets, as information is recorded slightly differently by departments. Where we have used unpublished data from management information, we have not sought to verify the accuracy or completeness of the underlying data provided to us. The management information we have used has not been quality-assured to national or official statistics levels.

13 Where we refer to the amounts that the Home Office or MoJ spent on asylum in the 2024-25 financial year, these figures are largely drawn from the audited data from their annual reports and accounts. We have indicated where figures are based on financial information provided directly to us (see notes under Figure 5).

Document and model review

14 We assessed the work of the Home Office and MoJ in modelling aspects of the asylum system and how these models inform operational and strategic decision-making. Our aim was to assess the way modelling was carried out and used but not to audit the models directly.

15 We gathered information through interviews, model walkthroughs and documentation. We applied aspects of the National Audit Office’s model review framework to evaluate model risks, assumptions, uncertainty estimates, and the use of outputs.26 We considered data sources, assumptions, output types, modelling frequency, and stakeholder engagement. We focused our review on:

the Home Office’s suite of end-to-end models for the UK Irregular Migration System, including strategic, operational, planning, and tactical components; and

MoJ models used for financial and operational planning within the HMCTS Immigration and Asylum Chamber.

16 We assessed the modelling work between June and October 2025 and our work does not reflect updates after that period.

17 We conducted 10 interviews with Home Office officials covering:

models for asylum intake, casework, post-decision processes (including appeals), and accommodation/support;

the ‘Future State’ model and Immigration Enforcement models (detention and returns);

economic models, including appraisal;

modelling for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) and intake projections shared with local authorities;

the theory of change for system-wide reforms;

Performance Reporting & Analysis Unit (PRAU) data monitoring and quality; and

mapping of asylum system flows.

18 We also held five interviews with MoJ and HMCTS officials on:

appeals processes and legal aid;

intake and case progression models for courts and tribunals; and

models assessing demand versus system capacity and constraints.

19 We reviewed documents from the Home Office and MoJ including model explainers, methodologies, user guides, data quality logs, and assurance reports. These covered models for intake projections, initial decision simulations, system volume, estate planning, financial planning, procurement, and enforcement capacity. We assessed all the documents against the themes we identified (see Figure 7).

Site visits

20 We carried out five site visits, to:

an Immigration Removal Centre near Heathrow Airport;

a Home Office decision-making unit, where caseworkers made initial decisions on asylum claims;

a Home Office site where specialist caseworking teams are based, including teams responsible for secondary caseworking, further submissions, and the Home Office’s appeals and litigation work;

an HMCTS Service Centre, where staff carry out administrative duties to progress appeals; and

A First-tier Tribunal (Asylum and Immigration) site.

21 The visits enabled us to see first-hand how operational staff worked in the system on a day-to-day basis, and helped us to develop our understanding of the pressures and constraints within the system, and the impacts they can have on how key operational processes work. During these visits, we carried out a mixture of observation, unstructured conversations, and interviews, both individually and with small groups of staff. We were also able to sit alongside caseworkers as they carried out their job, to observe and ask questions about the processes at hand. The findings from these visits were used both to help us develop our thematic findings, and as a rich source of examples to illustrate some of those findings.

Data sampling

22 In September 2025, we received a data sample from the Home Office representing 5,000 individuals who made an asylum claim in January 2023. The anonymised data contained the date at which each claim reached key decision milestones within the asylum system and its status when the data was extracted. This allowed us to see common routes through the system and the time taken during the processes represented.

23 Limitations in the available data meant that we were only able to show high level outcomes (for example, further submission made to the Home Office and eventual decision), but not the more granular details of an asylum seeker’s journey through the system. These cases were first lodged in January 2023, and there have been several legislative and system changes since then. As such, the analysis is intended to be an illustration of possible paths through the system and the points at which long delays may occur. It is not intended to represent how long it may take a claim made today to progress through the system. Our analysis of the sample data is presented in the data visualisation under the section entitled “Journeys through the asylum system” and is also referenced in this report at paragraph 2.12.

International comparisons

24 We conducted international comparative analysis to explore how other countries manage their asylum systems. The purpose was to understand whether other countries face similar challenges in their asylum systems, and how they have responded to these challenges. The findings may offer insights that could help inform the management of the asylum system in the UK. To select comparable countries, we used the following criteria:

their geographical location (in northern Europe);

a similar immigration and asylum context to the UK (primarily ‘destination countries’);

volumes of asylum applications (high volumes of applications relative to the population); and

demonstrated efforts to streamline asylum processing.

25 We then selected four countries (Germany, France, the Netherlands and Sweden) based on additional factors we deemed most relevant to the UK’s context, such as shared challenges including caseworking backlogs and limited housing capacity for people seeking asylum.

26 We carried out a desk-based review of publicly available sources in all four countries, including European Union reports on immigration and asylum and national government websites and reports. We extracted relevant findings and analysed them against elements of the UK’s asylum system (caseworking, accommodation and right to work, appeals, detention and return). The results are in Appendix Two.

26 Good practice guidance, Framework to review models, National Audit Office, January 2022.

Appendix Two

International comparisons

1 We conducted desk-based research on approaches to asylum policies and processing to identify alternative approaches and potential lessons for the UK. Figure 8 summarises our findings.

Appendix Three

Previous National Audit Office work on the asylum system

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