Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how long it takes for an asylum seeker to receive a decision on their application for section 4 support under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999; if successful in their application, how soon they should receive that support; and what is the average time taken (1) to decide an application for section 4 support, and (2) for payment to be made.

The Home Office has a range of measures for processing asylum support applications depending on the nature of the application being made. Access to accommodation and subsistence payments is provided once suitable accommodation is sourced and eligibility confirmed. Currently information on processing times is not recorded in a format suitable for publication and there are no plans to publish such statistics at this time.

The Home Office is continuing to work with the National Asylum Stakeholder Forum to consider what further information could be made publicly available once the new IT system for asylum support casework has been fully implemented later this year.