Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what is the average length of time that an applicant for asylum has to wait for a decision.

The Home Office does not publish data relating to the average length of time an applicant for asylum has to wait for a decision but does publish data on the percentage of asylum applications processed within the previous service standard to decide 98% of straight forward asylum claims within 6 months of the date of claim.

Data on performance against the current published service standard can be found on tabs Asy_10 and Asy_11 of the Asylum Transparency Data November 2018 at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/asylum-transparency-data-november-2018

In the November release of the transparency data, the Home Office are still reporting performance against our previous service standard to decide all straight forward asylum cases within 6 months of the date of claim. The next release of transparency data, scheduled for 28 February 2019, will still contain data on performance and will be labelled under the title of percentage of cases decided within 6 months rather than explicitly referring to the service standard.