Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 30 October 2024 to Question 10427 on Animal Experiments: Licensing, how many applications received by the regulator were returned to the applicant for reconsideration between 1 January 2023 and 30 September 2024; and how many applicants withdrew an application in response to feedback from the regulator in that period.

The Home Office Regulator for animals in science provides comprehensive guidance to project licence applicants and has a thorough and extensive application process; see Guidance at:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6700017e080bdf716392ee63/Guidance_on_the_operation_of_ASPA_-_December_2023.pdf

Applicants may not apply for a licence unless they are doing so under an Establishment licence with all the associated requirements of the legislation, have demonstrable funding and can demonstrate appropriate availability of resources as well as having been through a rigorous process of local checks and balances. First time applications to the Regulator are therefore of general high conformity with legal requirements.

The Regulator reports that project licence applications for 2024, to date, had a mean number of 2.4 iterations before granting. The Regulator does not collect data on the number of applications withdrawn, but reports that such occurrences are rare.