Why do you think the processing rate is so low?
It is because of this:
TLDR: “The picture that emerges is of a government operation that has been systematically neglected and under-resourced for many years”
FULL QUOTE:
Slower Home Office decision-making
While part of the problem has been the increase in the numbers of people seeking asylum, a major contributor is the extraordinarily slow speed of Home Office civil servants in processing decisions. According to analysis by the Oxford Migration Observatory, an
average staff member made just two decisions per month in the year ended March 2022, compared with eight per month in the year ending in March 2016. That represents a 75% fall in productivity. How can this be?
Several factors have been suggested to explain this ultra-poor performance. They include inadequate staff training, low morale and high staff turnover due to lack of career progression and pressure to meet targets.
Writing in
The Guardian in November 2022, Enver Solomon, CEO of the Refugee Council, states: “A year ago, concerted action was taken to
recruit more caseworkers. But it takes at least a year from recruitment to training for a caseworker to be up to speed to do the job well. A plan should have been put in place well before the Covid pandemic when the backlog was already quickly growing. And it gets worse. Unbelievably, there hasn’t been a functional IT casework system. Decision-makers have been using spreadsheets.”
‘Inefficient and ineffective’
He quotes a
report published in November 2021, in which the chief inspector of borders and immigration, David Neal, cited ‘inefficient’ and ‘ineffective’ workflow processes and an over-reliance on cumbersome Excel files. He adds it took a year for a decent IT system to be developed that is only now being put in place.
Solomon sums up: “The picture that emerges is of a government operation that has been systematically neglected and under-resourced for many years
John Cole examines the appalling asylum processing record of the Home Office and asks are the failures systemic or from the top?
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