Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average waiting time is to return foreign offenders to their country of origin under the Facilitated Return Scheme; and whether there is a target time for such cases.

The Facilitated Return Scheme (FRS) offers all foreign national offenders (FNOs) with a determinate prison sentence the opportunity to volunteer to return to their country of origin.

The average waiting time to return foreign offenders to their country of origin under FRS is not obtainable from our current database. Whilst we aim to consider or decide all applications within 20 days, there is no specific target for removal.

This is a practical solution which saves the taxpayer considerable amount of money in the long run and means FNOs can be removed as soon as possible, denying them the opportunity to re-offend.

While we make every effort to ensure that a foreign national offender’s removal by deportation coincides, as far as possible, with their release from prison on completion of sentence, we can face significant and complex challenges when seeking to deport them to their country of origin, including obtaining valid travel documents.

Published information on FRS was published in December 2021 and is available from The Facilitated Return Scheme (FRS) (publishing.service.gov.uk).