Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum seekers waited over six months for a decision on their asylum application in 2017.

The Home Office does not publish data relating to the number of cases where a decision has been made after 6 months, however, the data on the number of cases awaiting decision for more than 6 months can be found on the tab ASY 11 in the below link. At the time of release in November 2017, there were 10,529 cases over 6 months old awaiting decision.

The Home Office does have a Service Standard to make decisions on 98% of straight forward asylum claims within six months and it has met this standard for the last 39 months.

We are aware that the number of older cases awaiting decision is increasing and have plans are in place to reduce this number.

Information regarding Asylum data is published as part of the Government’s Transparency agenda the latest release of which can be found at can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/asylum-transparency-data-november-2017