Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many asylum application caseworkers are currently employed by the Home Office; and what plans they have to hire more staff to address the appeals backlog.

The number of full time equivalent (FTE) asylum caseworkers employed at the Home Office per month until December 2025 is published in the ASY_05(M) tab of the published migration transparency statistics, located on the Immigration and Protection data; September to December 2025. At the end of December 2025, there were 2,028 FTE asylum caseworkers.

We are continuing to onboard staff to maintain staffing at the required levels to allow us to manage asylum intake, reduce the overall time to make initial asylum decisions and deal with appeals.