Four critical requirements needed for a fair, efficient asylum system - NAO
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The National Audit Office (NAO) has mapped out the asylum system
end-to-end to show the causes of delay and inefficiency - the first
time it has been presented in this way The public spending watchdog
has also created an interactive data visualisation and analysed a
sample of 5,000 asylum cases lodged almost three years ago, finding
over half (56%) of those people still do not have a final outcome
Following the Home Secretary's newly announced measures to overhaul
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For years, short-term, reactive measures have shifted pressures within the asylum system, creating new backlogs and leaving many claims unresolved for extended periods. This has led to inefficiencies, wasted public funds, and harm to both asylum seekers' life chances and the government's ability to meet its obligations to them and UK citizens, says the NAO. Through a data visualisation, and for the first time, the asylum system has been mapped out – from initial intake through to Home Office case processing, tribunal appeals, and local authority services to final outcome such as protection or removal – to show where the constraints lie and help government move from short-term fixes to a sustainable, whole-system approach. The visualisation also shows how people claiming asylum in the UK move through the asylum system, the flow and quality of data from government departments, the costs, and how different organisations interact. It includes analysis of the progress through the system for a sample of 5,000 people who made an initial asylum claim in January 2023. The NAO found that 35% of people in the sample had so far been granted protection while approximately 9% were removed from the UK after their applications were unsuccessful. But the claims of 56% of the people in the sample remain unresolved. Of these, 25% are awaiting an appeal decision and 8% involve further submissions. The remaining open claims are not being progressed, and the individuals involved have not been removed from the UK. There are encouraging examples of officials tackling root causes of failure and collaborating, but these are not systemic. In the accompanying report - An analysis of the asylum system - the NAO has identified four critical requirements – whole-system approach, addressing fundamental barriers, timely & robust shared data and a resilient approach to capacity and workforce – for a fair and efficient system that delivers value for taxpayers. 1. Whole-system approach The NAO's work over many years auditing the government's delivery of services has shown that taking a whole-system approach is one of the most important foundations for success. The government has not defined what outcomes it wants to achieve or agreed shared objectives across departments. Currently the asylum system has no single point of accountability or overall governance. Interventions have tended to be reactive and focused on fixing an urgent problem in one part of the system only, which has led to rework, delays, and inevitably increased costs. The NAO concluded in 2023 that efforts to speed up initial asylum decisions had shifted pressures elsewhere in the system, creating new backlogs in appeals and homelessness presentations to local authorities. There is no overall cross-government budget for the asylum system. The NAO estimates the Home Office and Ministry of Justice together spent around £4.9 billion on asylum in 2024–25. The largest contributing element of the costs is direct spending on asylum support (e.g. accommodation, grants to local authorities, cash support) on which the Home Office spent around £4 billion in 2024-25 (£4.7 billion in 2023-24). 2. Addressing fundamental barriers The system's effectiveness and value for money are undermined because of fundamental barriers that mean people seeking asylum spend extended periods waiting in the system. A major challenge is the inability to promptly remove people whose claims have failed and who do not leave voluntarily - leading to significant costs for accommodation and support. Removing people is more difficult where they lack identity documents, and even where agreements exist between the UK and other countries, as compliance can be limited. In 2024–25, 68% of refused applicants lodged an appeal, and at present there is no limit on further submissions with new evidence, which can trigger new appeal rights. 3. Timely, robust and shared data The NAO frequently finds across government that robust data is not a priority and there is a culture of tolerating and working around data that is not fit for purpose. While there have been improvements, data availability, data quality, and IT systems working together still pose major challenges to managing the asylum system effectively. The Home Office has faced difficulties transferring and merging legacy data, improving functionality, and upskilling staff to create a single reliable record from its case management system, Atlas, for each person seeking asylum. Resolving identities and linking records across systems is ongoing, and incomplete, inaccurate records for individuals limit decision-making quality and the ability to forecast demand. It remains impossible to track individuals or cases across Home Office, HM Courts & Tribunals Service and local authority systems using a unique identifier. 4. Resilient and strategic approach to capacity and workforce Efficient systems deliver value for money by getting work right first time, moving cases through at the right pace without backlogs, and ensuring seamless transfers of responsibility. The asylum system faces fluctuating demand and severe capacity constraints – from judges to legal aid, caseworkers, and accommodation. When demand exceeds capacity, bottlenecks create delays. Appeals have risen in recent years as cases refused during the Home Office's clearance of the backlog of initial asylum decisions moved into the appeals system. In 2024–25, the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) received around 61,000 appeals relating to asylum and protection and human rights cases. By March 2025, the FTT's open caseload was 73,000 - almost five times higher than the caseload for these types of cases in 2019-20. The NAO has several recommendations for the government to help move towards a sustainable, whole-system approach; these include:
Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “Our analysis shows that the efforts of successive governments to improve the efficiency of the asylum system have often been short-term and narrowly focused, reacting to backlogs and rising costs.
“Successfully implementing the new asylum model recently
announced by the Home Secretary will require effective action on
the bottlenecks in the current system using better quality data
and streamlined decision-making.” An analysis of the asylum system and accompanying data visualisation covers the end-to-end system for managing asylum claims from the point at which someone makes a claim in the UK to the point at which they exit the asylum system, whether that is through a grant of protection, removal from the UK or otherwise reaching the end of the process. It does not cover dedicated asylum and protection schemes such as the Homes for Ukraine Scheme or the three Afghanistan resettlement schemes. It does not cover irregular migration by individuals who do not make a claim for asylum. We do not include government activities designed to prevent or discourage illegal migration, though these are clearly relevant to the flows into the asylum system. Our work covered arrangements up to and including November 2025 but some aspects of the system are likely to change under the government's proposed reforms. The data visualisation uses official statistics from the Home Office, Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). |