Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum applications awaiting an initial decision were lodged one year or longer ago; and how many asylum applications had not received an initial decision at the end of each month of the last five years.

The Home Office publishes data on asylum in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on asylum applications awaiting initial decision can be found in table Asy_D03 of the ‘Asylum and resettlement detailed datasets’. Please note that data is broken down by duration awaiting decision of ‘6 months or less’ and ‘more than 6 months’. Additionally, data is published quarterly and reflect the number of people awaiting a decision as at the end of the period, rather than the total throughout the period.

Information on how to use the datasets can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbooks. The latest data relate to the year ending March 2023.

Data for the year ending June 2023 is scheduled to be published on 24 August 2023. Information on future Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the ‘Research and statistics calendar’.

Alternatively, operational data on the total awaiting asylum initial decision WIP can be found in table ASY_02 of the ‘Immigration and protection data’ published as part of the ‘Migration transparency data’ release. This data includes further breakdown of duration awaiting decision (less than 3 months, 3-6 months, 6-12 months and 12 months+) and refers to applications made after 1^st October 2006.