Nearly 42,000 UK asylum seekers waiting on appeal

Almost 42,000 asylum seekers are waiting for an entreaty proceeding aft the Home Office rejected their archetypal claims, according to investigation of authoritative figures.

The Refugee Council said the fig is simply a five-fold summation successful 2 years and the authorities risks simply moving the asylum situation from 1 portion of the strategy to another, with astir 40,000 migrants inactive housed successful hotels.

The Home Office said it had doubled the fig of asylum seekers receiving an archetypal determination connected their assertion and allocated backing for much sitting tribunal days.

A spokesperson said the authorities remains determined to extremity the usage of asylum hotels implicit clip and chopped the "unacceptably high" costs of accommodation.

The Refugee Council said much asylum seekers' claims are being refused owed to authorities introduced by the erstwhile Conservative government, which made it harder to beryllium genuine exile status.

After the authorities enacted the Nationality and Borders Act, lone 4 successful 10 Afghans were fixed support to enactment successful the 2nd fractional of past year. Previously, astir each Afghans asking for sanctuary were granted asylum.

Many of those rejected are thought apt to beryllium appealing the decision. Currently, Afghans marque up the highest nationality accommodated successful hotels and those arriving by tiny boats successful the past 2 years.

The main enforcement of the Refugee Council, Enver Solomon, has called for amended and fairer determination making.

"Right first-time determination making volition guarantee refugees are fixed information to spell connected to lend to communities crossed the state and those who don't person a close to enactment successful the UK are removed with dignity and respect," helium said.

The foundation points retired that those successful the appeals backlog inactive necessitate accommodation and warns that, without improvements, the imaginable outgo of hotels could beryllium £1.5bn this year.

A authorities spokesperson said: "The asylum strategy we inherited was not acceptable for purpose, which is wherefore we are taking urgent enactment to restart asylum processing and wide the backlog of cases, which volition prevention the payer an estimated £4 cardinal implicit the adjacent 2 years."

It is allocating backing for "thousands much sitting days successful the Immigration and Asylum Chamber to streamline asylum claims and amended productivity," the connection added.

Statistics from the Ministry of Justice amusement that astatine the extremity of 2024 determination were 41,987 asylum appeals successful the court's backlog, up from 7,173 astatine the commencement of 2023.

The Refugee Council's investigation suggests the full fig of asylum exertion appeals lodged past twelvemonth was a 71% summation connected 2023.