Introduction

It will not have escaped the notice of anyone returning from a recent trip abroad that staff at customs and passport control now have a new uniform and work under a new UK border sign. They are from the UK Border Agency (the Agency), an agency of the Home Office formed in April 2008. They manage border control for the UK, enforcing immigration and customs regulations. The Agency also consider applications for permission to enter or stay in the UK, for citizenship and for asylum. The Agency’s origins lay in the Border and Immigration Agency (formerly the Immigration and Nationality Directorate of the Home Office) and grew to take on UKvisas (dealing with entry clearance) and the port of entry functions of HM Revenue & Customs.

The Agency now have a workforce of 24,500, working in 135 countries and all over the UK, and a budget of more than £2 billion. In 2008 the Agency handled over 100 million international arrivals from outside the Common Travel Area ^[1]; issued over 1.5 million entry clearance visas and made almost 375,000 decisions on applications for extension of leave to remain and for settlement. They also received almost 26,000 applications for asylum, excluding dependants (including dependants, the figure is over 31,000).

The Agency’s statement of purpose is to ‘secure our borders and control migration for the benefit of our country’, supported by their three strategic objectives to ‘protect the UK border and national interests … tackle border tax fraud, smuggling and immigration crime … implement fast and fair decisions’. They aim to:

‘help create a society where the contribution from immigration is recognized, the communities in the UK are cohesive, discrimination is minimized and the public are confident that migration is well managed, firmly enforced and, therefore, demonstrably fair.^[2]

As the Foreword to this report indicates, the Agency and their predecessors have consistently generated a large number of complaints to the Ombudsman, not just in terms of the number of complaints we receive, but also the number of complaints accepted for investigation and the high proportion which are upheld. The complaints are mostly from people in this country who are facing long delays awaiting a decision on their application to the Agency. This may, for example, be an application for asylum or for permission to visit, study, work, or settle in the UK.

Asylum

Asylum is protection given by a country to someone who is fleeing persecution in their own country. It is given under the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. To be recognised as a refugee, the asylum seeker must have left their own country and be unable to return because they have a well founded fear of persecution. The UK also abides by the European Convention on Human Rights, which prevents someone being sent to a country where there is a real risk that they will be exposed to torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

What should we expect from an effective system for the assessment of asylum applications? That applicants are told what to expect: that they are safe and properly supported while awaiting a decision, and that they receive a ‘fast and fair’ decision on their application. For those who are unsuccessful the expectation must be that, unless there is some other reason why they should be allowed to stay in the UK, they should promptly leave the country, or be removed as soon as is practicable.

In our experience the Agency are a very long way from achieving this. Historically some of the biggest problems they face, reflected in the complaints we receive, are those of very long delays in dealing with applications, and huge backlogs of work. The largest backlog by far has been in resolving asylum applications, although the number of asylum applications has now dropped significantly, from 80,000 in 2000 to just under 26,000 in 2008. In July 2006 the Home Secretary announced that the Immigration and Nationality Directorate of the Home Office had a ‘legacy’ of between 400,000 and 450,000 electronic and paper records relating to unresolved asylum cases, and that they would aim to clear those cases in 5 years or less.^[3]

The Agency’s stated intention at that time was to complete consideration of all those cases by July 2011. But even before the Home Secretary made his announcement, several of the applicants had already been waiting many years for a final decision on their status, and so many will have had to wait up to 5 more years for a final resolution (although the Agency say the majority would already have had a previous decision). By the end of September 2009 the Agency had concluded 220,000 cases. They say that they are on track to clear this backlog ahead of the summer 2011 deadline, which was a target they imposed upon themselves and set aside fresh resource to deliver.

The administrative muddle created from this legacy backlog has had a serious impact on many thousands of asylum applicants. Mr C is just one example where, having decided to grant him indefinite leave to remain as a refugee, it then took the Agency seven years to resolve a simple matter:

‘The Agency decided to grant Mr C indefinite leave to remain in May 2000, but he did not receive his status documents until February 2008. Initially the Agency were not at fault as they had not been given details of Mr C’s representatives’ new address. But once Mr C re-established contact in March 2001 the Agency should have reconsidered their original decision and issued a new decision. This did not happen then, nor on the five subsequent occasions between 2002 and 2007 when Mr C’s representatives contacted the Agency about his outstanding asylum application. It was not until Mr C’s representatives contacted his MP that any real progress was made. This long delay caused Mr C considerable uncertainty and stress, along with more practical difficulties such as being unable to open a bank account.’

The National Asylum Support Service was once a division of the Agency which administered the support provided to asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute. (This function has since been devolved to the appropriate caseworkers.)

But Mr W’s case shows how the Agency’s administrative failings can leave someone in limbo for six years, and completely without support for eight months:

‘In October 2001 Mr W was refused leave to enter the UK, and claimed asylum. He started receiving assistance from the National Asylum Support Service (NASS). In March 2002 the Agency refused his asylum claim and granted him exceptional leave to enter for one year. But they failed to send the decision notification to him. At an interview with the Agency in January 2007 Mr W learnt of the exceptional leave to remain notification which had not been served in 2002. However, the Agency assumed that the notice had been served and so stopped his NASS support from January 2007.

The Agency’s handling of Mr W’s case was poor, characterised by errors and delays in processing both his asylum claim and his entry clearance appeal, culminating in the incorrect withdrawal of his NASS support. These errors were compounded by wholly ineffective complaint handling and a lack of urgency to "put things right". On numerous occasions Mr W told the Agency of his predicament in being without NASS support and requested urgent action: these included three letters under the Agency’s complaints procedure which received no responses other than acknowledgements. Having left Mr W in a state of limbo for six years, the Agency granted him indefinite leave to remain in September 2007.’

By acknowledging and addressing the legacy backlog in 2006, and then introducing their New Asylum Model in April 2007, the Agency have taken significant steps towards improving the service they provide to their customers. Under the new process a case owner manages each new asylum case from application to conclusion, at which point the applicant is either allowed to stay in the UK or returned to his or her country of origin. This is central to the Agency’s aim of ‘faster and fairer’ decisions. Commenting on the Agency’s progress, the Head of the National Audit Office said in January 2009 that:

‘The aim of the New Asylum Model is to strengthen the management of asylum applications, and it has delivered some improvements. But the system is not working as it should for every case … There is a risk that a new backlog of unresolved cases will be created, adding to the existing backlog of "legacy cases".’^[4]

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee also found in June 2009^[5] that the Agency had made significant progress through the New Asylum Model, but that they still had some way to go to meet their aims of reaching initial decisions in 80% of cases within 2 months of an application, and of concluding all cases within 6 months. In July 2009 the Chief Executive of the Agency told the Home Affairs Select Committee that some 60% of applications were concluded within 6 months.^[6] The Public Accounts Committee also found that backlogs had also built up in other areas of the Agency’s core immigration work: for example, applications for leave to remain on the basis of marriage to a UK spouse, where decisions had been outstanding over a period of 3 or 4 years or more.

The Agency also face the challenge in 2010 of beginning to review the refugee status of all those granted asylum since August 2005, when the Agency started granting refugee status for 5 years rather than indefinitely. The National Audit Office report in January 2009 found that over 23,000 applicants had been granted asylum since 2005: ‘However, the Agency has no process to keep track of refugees after they have been granted asylum and no plans in place to review these case.^[7] In March 2009 the Permanent Secretary said that: ‘We start this [review] at the five year point which is in the last quarter of 2010. We do now have a plan in place for starting that system in the latter part of 2010’.^[8] HM Treasury have said that they will ensure that the necessary resource is available to carry out these reviews.^[9]

Core immigration and nationality work

The Agency’s core immigration and nationality work is dealing with applications for limited or indefinite leave to remain from those who wish to visit, study, work, or settle in the UK, or who wish to become British citizens. These applications are generally chargeable and the fees can be significant (at the time of writing, this was up to £820 for a postal application for indefinite leave to remain, or £1,020 for such an application made in person). The Agency’s Customer Charter^[10] sets out service standards and targets for the key areas of their operations.

Anyone paying for a service can expect to receive that service within a reasonable time, and to be told if there are going to be any delays. The higher the payment, the higher the expectation. But Mrs L paid £950 and had to wait for over a year for a decision on her application for settlement on the grounds of marriage:

‘Mrs L applied in July 2007 for indefinite leave to remain on the basis of her marriage. She paid £950 for a priority "same-day" application, which is intended for straightforward applications. Mrs L’s application was not straightforward and we accepted that it was reasonable for the Agency not to make a decision on the day. But it then took them over a year to make a decision and grant her indefinite leave. Delays by the Agency included taking six months to link the relevant files together, and closing their marriage interview team without putting in place all the necessary alternative arrangements – this led to marriage interviews being suspended for approximately a year. Mrs L said that this was "the most stressful year of my life waiting and worrying" about the outcome of the Agency’s deliberations, "only to find out that all the stress was caused by pure inefficiency".’

Another reasonable expectation is that if the Agency are charging for an application, they will tell the customer if there has been a problem processing the payment. This did not happen in Ms T’s case, with the result that the Agency requested an increased fee of an additional £415:

‘Ms T applied in February 2007 for indefinite leave to remain on the basis of her marriage. The Agency attempted to process the payment of £335, but the credit card was declined. Ms T said that she had repeatedly checked with her bank to see if the payment had gone through, and when she contacted the Agency they told her not to worry. The Agency did not make her aware that there was a problem with the payment until they returned her application as "withdrawn". She was then required to submit another application paying the new fee of £750, as this had gone up in the meantime. Ms T complained to the Agency that no one had told her that her credit card had been declined, and when the Agency did contact her it was too late to submit new payment details. The Agency’s response to her complaint was that they had followed the correct procedure in treating her application as withdrawn.'

Delays and backlogs on applications where a fee is paid

People who have entered the UK illegally, or have overstayed their leave, have no right to remain here. But if they make an application to the Agency to regularise their stay, the Agency must consider that application and decide either to allow them to stay, or remove them. Whether or not the applicant has paid a fee, both the applicant and the general public should be able to expect that the Agency will make this decision within a reasonable time, and for the applicant to be given some indication of how long it will take. It is also reasonable for the applicant to expect that any letters they or their representatives write to the Agency will receive a response. Delays by the Agency in deciding such applications mean that people who should be given permission to stay are often left unable to support themselves and uncertain as to their future; and those who should be removed remain here, with their chances of eventually being allowed to stay increasing because of the Agency’s delay.

The Agency say they are committed to ‘meet our service standards, including quality improvements, and progress towards our goal of becoming a no backlog organisation’.^[11] But we have seen backlogs arising in other areas of the Agency’s work in addition to their legacy of old asylum claims. These included 33,000 applications where a fee was paid, and 77,000 applications for residence made under European law. It seems that these new backlogs arose when Agency resources were directed towards other priorities, such as dealing with the backlog of asylum applications, and the removal of foreign national prisoners (after it was revealed that over 1,000 foreign national prisoners had not been considered for deportation when they should have been).

In October 2005 the Agency set up a new team to deal with the above backlog of almost 33,000 paid applications for leave to remain in the UK from applicants who had either entered the UK illegally or had overstayed their leave. In the 12 months from September 2008 we accepted for investigation 21 complaints about the Agency’s delays in coming to a decision on applications made between 2005 and 2007. We found numerous instances of the Agency’s failure to reply to correspondence or deal with complaints, their inability to give applicants any indication of when they could expect to receive a decision, and also their failure to consider whether particular cases should be prioritised for compassionate or other exceptional reasons. The Agency told us that they aimed to clear all outstanding cases by July 2010 at the latest, and had put in place arrangements for dealing with correspondence, advising applicants when they might expect a decision, and prioritising applications where appropriate. The Agency have said that they are ahead of their July 2010 target – the remaining cases are complex and they aim to complete them by early 2010, leaving only a small number of cases outstanding.

Although the Agency eventually put reasonable arrangements in place to manage this particular backlog, for years on end thousands of applicants had been left in limbo, unable to obtain any indication from the Agency of when they might be given a decision on their status. The two cases described below were both caught up in this backlog, and illustrate well the impact of the Agency’s poor service:

‘Ms G was brought to the UK at the age of seven in August 1987 by her father’s relatives. In November 2005 she applied for indefinite leave to remain on the grounds of 14 years’ residence in the UK. The Agency acknowledged her application and said that it would be dealt with in 13 weeks at most. Although in later correspondence the Agency said that applications such as hers could not be dealt with within normal timescales, they gave no indication of how long it might take. Ms G said that the Agency’s delay had overshadowed all aspects of her life – it had prevented her from finding employment and had meant that she was totally dependent on others, which she found very embarrassing. She felt that her life was being shattered because of her lack of status in the country she had grown up in, and she felt misplaced as a result. The Agency granted her indefinite leave to remain in April 2009, having taken three and a half years to decide the application.’

‘Mr E applied in February 2005 for leave to remain as the spouse of a person settled in the UK. The Agency acknowledged his application and said that it would be dealt with in 13 weeks at most. But, in fact, the Agency did not progress Mr E’s application for over four years, and did not give him or his MP any useful advice about when they could expect a decision. While the Agency did reply to much of the correspondence, they failed to reply to a number of letters, and made some errors in their responses. Specifically, the Agency disregarded Mrs E’s letter of November 2005 in which she explained that her husband was depressed and had attempted suicide because of his inability to support his family. Mr E told us that he was concerned about the effects of the Agency’s delay on his family: he had been married for five years and had two young children. He did not receive any form of financial support, and relied on the wages from his wife’s part-time job. He wanted to move on with his life and be able to provide for his family. In April 2009 the Agency granted Mr E indefinite leave to remain in the UK exceptionally outside the Immigration Rules. Mr E told us that, now his status is clear, he and his wife intend to take a three-year Mental Health Nursing course together.’

Quite apart from those in this backlog, it seems that some applications have been overlooked altogether. In one case, which we resolved without investigating, the applicant had been waiting for over five years for a decision on her application for indefinite leave to remain. It was only when we contacted the Agency that they realised her case should have been transferred to the charged casework team dealing with this backlog, and they then began processing her application.

Applying under European law

European Economic Area (EEA) and Swiss nationals have the right to live and work in the UK provided they are self-sufficient (not a burden on the social assistance system). If someone has this ‘right of residence’, their family is allowed to join them here. The Agency issue residence cards to family members of EEA nationals who are not themselves EEA nationals. The card confirms that person’s right of residence under European law.

Family members of EEA nationals have more than simply a reasonable expectation that their application for a residence card will be dealt with in a reasonable time, as the Agency are required by law to issue a residence permit within six months of the date of application.^[12] When the Agency acknowledge applications, they tell applicants that they are allowed to work while awaiting confirmation of their right of residence. But when there are delays beyond the statutory time limit in dealing with applications this can cause difficulties, such as in finding employment, or with an applicant’s employers, or with travel abroad.

EEA applications is another area of the Agency’s operations where a large backlog has built up. This backlog of up to 77,000 residence applications began when the Agency diverted existing staffing resources away from European casework to focus on the Government’s priority of foreign national prisoners. In June 2007 the Agency published a programme which included a five-fold increase in the number of people working to address the previous failings in the handling of the cases of foreign national prisoners. The Agency have said that this increase was met, in part, by diverting some 140 European caseworking staff to their Criminal Casework Directorate in March 2008. This diversion of experienced staff has had a negative effect on the Agency’s ability to process EEA applications, with almost 39,000 applications being outside the statutory six-month time limit by August 2009.^[13] The Agency put in place a recovery plan which aimed to return to service standards by December 2009. The Agency have said that the total number of outstanding EEA applications has reduced from approximately 77,000 in April 2009 to 38,000 in November 2009, and that all the remaining cases should be resolved by early 2010; applications submitted since 29 July 2009 are being dealt with within their service standards.

Even before the current backlogs, we have seen examples of poor handling of EEA residence cards. For example:

‘Mrs N’s application for a residence card was subject to a catalogue of errors by the Agency. They wrote to her at the wrong address, failed to identify her letter as an appeal and incorrectly sent her file to the removals unit, where it was incorrectly put into storage. They also failed to respond to the substance of her complaint about their handling of her case, and so missed the opportunity to put right their earlier mistakes. The Agency’s errors delayed the approval of Mrs N’s residence card by over 12 months and in the meantime she was unable to start work without it.’

What can a customer expect from the Agency?

In my Principles of Good Administration,^[14] I described what I consider public bodies should do to deliver good administration and customer service, and how to respond when things go wrong. While all the Principles are applicable to the work of the Agency, the ones most relevant to our investigations of complaints about them are ‘Getting it right’ and ‘Putting things right’. It is also important that the Agency follow the Principle of ‘Being customer focused’. This includes:

• ‘Informing customers what they can expect and what the [Agency] expects of them.
• ‘Keeping to … commitments, including any published service standards.
• ‘Dealing with people helpfully, promptly and sensitively, bearing in mind their individual circumstances.’

From the complaints we have seen, it is clear that the Agency are a long way from achieving this, and from meeting their customers’ reasonable expectations. Indeed there are numerous examples where the Agency have been unable to perform at even a basic level of administration, such as reading and replying to letters, keeping proper records, keeping case files together and in the proper place, and notifying the applicant of their decision. The worst examples of this are usually from those who are unfortunate enough to be caught up in one of the Agency’s backlogs mentioned above.

If someone asks for confirmation that they have been granted indefinite leave to remain, one would expect the Agency to be able to confirm this from their records without too much difficulty or delay. But this did not happen in Mr P’s case, with serious consequences:

‘Mr P was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK in May 1990. His previous Jamaican passport had been destroyed, and so in 2004 he applied for a No Time Limit stamp to be put on his new passport to show that he did have leave to remain in the UK, enclosing a fee of £155. This application was refused because he had provided no evidence that he had indefinite leave to remain, and the Agency said that they had no record of it either. In February 2005 Mr P made a new application for indefinite leave to remain. The Agency took almost two and a half years to reject this application and then served Mr P with a notice saying that he was liable to be removed from the UK. Mr P appealed against this decision but was unsuccessful. In October 2007 he made a further application for indefinite leave to remain, enclosing the fee of £750. In November 2007 an Agency officer emailed another seeking a "brief look" for any file papers on Mr P. These enquiries uncovered Mr P’s original Home Office paper file which contained clear evidence of his original entitlement to indefinite leave to remain. In February 2008 the Agency finally returned his passport, endorsed with his indefinite leave to remain status. We found that the Agency had failed to "get it right" from the beginning, as they did not take the obvious step of checking their own paper records to confirm Mr P’s status. As a result of this simple failure and the Agency’s lack of "customer focus", over a period of three and a half years Mr P missed two family funerals, was unable to visit his mother when she was ill, was wrongly threatened with removal from the UK and paid £750 for an application that should not have been necessary.’

In the case of Mr J, the Agency’s failure – twice – to serve their decision in February 2002 meant that by the time they started action to serve the decision for a third time their policy had changed, causing unnecessary complications:

‘In January 2006 Mr J applied for indefinite leave to remain. The Agency told Mr J that such applications were taking an average of eight months, but then took over two years to make a decision on his application. Without his MP’s intervention it is doubtful that Mr J would have received any information about his case, as the Agency had previously failed to respond to his and his representatives’ correspondence, and failed to do so again in November 2007. The Agency’s delay in considering Mr J’s application coincided with a time when his mother was seriously ill in Pakistan and, without his passport, Mr J was unable to visit her.’

Mr H is another example where problems were caused by confusion over whether a decision had been served:

‘Mr H arrived in the UK as a visitor in 1998. The Agency decided in July 2000 to grant him limited leave to remain on the basis of his marriage, but they did not serve that decision because they discovered that the most recent visa stamp in Mr H’s passport had been forged. Over the next eight years the Agency missed numerous opportunities to resolve the matter, but instead gave inconsistent and inaccurate information to Mr H’s representatives and to his MP. They also lost Mr H’s passport. In the meantime, in January 2001 Mr H had been charged with drugs offences and a warrant had been issued for his arrest for absconding from bail. Mr H subsequently served a ten-month sentence for supplying a controlled drug, and was released from prison in March 2009. The Agency finally made a decision in July 2009. They refused the application. (Mr H has since told us that he won his appeal against this refusal.)’

It is clearly essential that the Agency keep important personal documents safe, and this is the least that their customers might expect. Obtaining replacements can be difficult and costly, as well as upsetting. But Mr H was only one of a number of complainants whose passport was lost by the Agency. The Agency also did not ‘get it right’ when dealing with Mr M’s simple request for the return of his documents:

‘The Agency failed to return Mr M’s passport in August 2004 when he was refused asylum, and when asked to do so in July 2007. The Agency also did not take the opportunity to "put things right" as they did not respond substantively to his representatives’ follow-up letters, took until February 2008 to return his passport, and did not return his other documents until August 2008. These failures caused Mr M considerable worry, distress and inconvenience, particularly given his learning difficulties, long-term health problems, and language and literacy needs.’

In line with my Principles, bodies should ‘deal with complaints promptly, avoiding unnecessary delay, and in line with published service standards where appropriate’. Where they have got things wrong they should ‘put things right’.

I have referred above to Mr W’s experience of the Agency’s former complaints procedure: he sent three letters of complaint but received only acknowledgements. This is confirmed in many other complaints we have investigated. By and large, complainants received an acknowledgement of their complaint, telling them that it had been passed to the relevant business unit, but they did not then receive a substantive response. In February 2008 the Agency introduced a new two-stage complaints procedure seeking to address these problems. Although we have seen some signs of improvement since then, with some complainants receiving a substantive response to their complaint, some still do not receive a reply. It is too soon for us to comment on the quality of those complaint responses or on the effectiveness of the new procedure.

Our investigations have shown numerous examples of very poor customer service by the Agency. In addition to delays in dealing with applications, we have found consistent failures in responding to correspondence and complaints, mislaid files and poor record keeping, failure to manage customers’ expectations (or unreasonably raising them), and poor standards of advice and information. I do not underestimate the problems that the Agency face in trying to clear such large backlogs of work, but it seems that there is a long way to go before a large number of their customers can expect to receive a service which meets even minimum acceptable standards of customer service.

Progress and learning for the future

The Agency have made significant progress in recent years towards clearing their backlogs both in asylum and non-asylum cases, and they say that they have acted decisively to remedy mistakes of the past. As regards asylum, the Agency have pointed out that the two applicants referred to in this report (Mr C and Mr W) both applied around the time that there were the highest peaks of asylum applications in the last decade, reflected across Europe. They were received into a system that was mainly paper-based, and significant structural and legislative change has taken place since then to put the Agency on a sure footing.

As regards the time taken to bring asylum cases to a conclusion, the Agency say that in December 2008 they met their target to conclude 60% of new asylum cases within 6 months, in comparison to 1997 when it took on average 22 months merely to reach an initial decision. That means not only that decisions were taken earlier but that in a significant proportion of refusals, removal from the UK was effected within 6 months of application. They say that it is highly unlikely that today a new application would wait years. They attribute this to the new regionalised asylum model, where each asylum applicant has a named case owner responsible for taking the case from the beginning to the end of the process.

The Agency recognise the cost to the taxpayer of unresolved asylum cases and say they have reduced the annual cost of asylum support by a total of £550 million in the four years to 2007/08. They have continued to implement processes and procedures which are aimed at driving down costs still further. In the current financial year, they set up an Asylum Costs Reduction Board to review asylum costs each week.

Conclusion

If the Agency were operating effectively, any application – whether chargeable or not – would be determined within a reasonable period. This would apply whether the application was ‘in-time’, or made by an overstayer or illegal entrant who was seeking to regularise his or her status in the UK. As the following cases show, the Agency’s failure to resolve applications within reasonable timescales can have serious implications for the individuals concerned, and for society in general.

There is also a risk for the Agency of a loss of faith in their system by applicants, by other related organisations, and by the public at large. For the applicants and their families, there is the uncertainty and the inability to plan their lives, often coupled with financial difficulties caused by not being allowed to work pending a decision. For society, there is the cost to the public purse of supporting applicants pending a decision, as well as the cost to public services such as health, education and social services. There is also the opportunity cost: applicants who are eventually given permission to stay could have been working and contributing to society much sooner. Long delays in resolving applications can also have an effect on the eventual decision. Applicants who would have been refused and removed, if the Agency had made a decision at the proper time, can be allowed to stay because they have, in the meantime, put down sufficient roots in the UK so that it would be unreasonable to remove them. There are similar consequences when the Agency fail to keep track of and properly manage those who enter or remain in the country illegally. If someone manages to stay in the country unlawfully for 14 years or more, they obtain the right to apply under the Immigration Rules^[15] for indefinite leave to remain.

To prevent these problems continuing the Agency need to make significant and consistent progress towards their commitment to meeting service standards, clearing existing backlogs and avoiding them in future. This will be challenging, not least because from 2010 onwards the Agency will need to start reviewing all grants of asylum made since 2005. This is one area where a new backlog might arise, although with proper planning and resourcing it should be avoided. Past experience suggests that other backlogs may arise due to changing political imperatives. But the consequences of the Agency not improving their service are serious and far-reaching, both for the individuals caught up in the system, and for society as a whole. Given the scale of the problems, there can be no short-term fix, and the resolution will need to be founded on consistent priorities, proper forward planning, and adequate resources.

Footnotes

[1.] The Common Travel Area comprises the UK, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the Republic of Ireland.

[2.] Working together to protect the public, Home Office Departmental Report 2009.

[3.] These legacy cases relate to asylum applications made before March 2007 which were unresolved before the introduction of the Agency’s New Asylum Model in April 2007.

[4.] Press release accompanying the January 2009 National Audit Office Report Management of Asylum Applications by the UK Border Agency.

[5.] Management of Asylum Applications, House of Commons Public Accounts Committee HC 325, published 16 June 2009.

[6.] Lin Homer’s evidence to Home Affairs Select Committee, 8 July 2009.

[7.] January 2009 National Audit Office Report (as above).

[8.] Sir David Normington KCB oral evidence to Public Accounts Committee, 4 March 2009.

[9.] Treasury Minutes on the Twenty-Eighth Report from the Public Accounts Committee Session 2008-09.

[10.] Published in March 2009.

[11].] Working together to protect the public, Home Office Departmental Report 2009.

[12.] The Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2006.

[13.] In 2007–08 the average processing time was 3.0 months, and this has since risen to 6.4 months. 38,854 applications were outside the six-month time limit in August 2009.

[14.] Republished in February 2009 and available at www.ombudsman.org.uk

[15.] HC 395 – the Immigration Rules are made under section 3(2) of the Immigration Act 1971.

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