Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what is the average time taken to process applications for asylum and refugee status; how many applications are outstanding; and what is the longest outstanding time of a current application.

The Home Office publishes data on asylum on gov.uk as part of the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on the number of asylum claims awaiting an initial decision is published in Asy_D03 of the asylum detailed tables. As at 31 March 2025, there were 78,745 cases awaiting an initial decision.

The average time taken to process claims is not currently available from published statistics and could only be collated and verified for the purpose of answering this question at a disproportionate cost. However, the Home Office publishes on gov.uk the age of cases awaiting an initial decision in table Asy_02 of the Immigration and Protection transparency data. As at 31 March 2025, 58% of cases that were awaiting an initial decision had been waiting for more than 6 months, and 31% of the total cases had been awaiting an initial decision for more than 12 months.

The longest outstanding time for a claim awaiting an initial decision is not currently available from published statistics and could only be collated and verified for the purpose of answering this question at a disproportionate cost.