Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what was the longest processing time for an asylum claim in the last five years.

The Home Office publishes data on asylum in the 'Immigration System Statistics' and the ‘Migration Transparency Data’ releases.

Data on the number of asylum claims awaiting an initial decision by duration is published in table Asy_D03 of the ‘Asylum claims and decisions detailed datasets’ and data on the percentage of applications processed within 6 months is published in table ASY_01 of the ‘Immigration and Protection data’. For further information on the data, see the notes pages of the tables. As at 30 June 2026, 11,014 people had been awaiting an initial decision for over a year.

Data on longest processing times is not published. Official statistics published by the Home Office are kept under review in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics, taking into account a number of factors including user needs, the resources required to compile the statistics, as well as quality and availability of data.