Latest statistics: gaps in Home Office’s family data give cause for concern in light of earned settlement proposals

The quarterly immigration system statistics covering the period to September 2025 have been published. As highlighted in the title of the post, I have looked at quite a few of the areas in light of last week’s proposals and I am particularly concerned as to whether even the Home Office understands the potential impact of what it appears to be suggesting. It is perhaps even more concerning to think that they do understand the impact but are deliberately hiding it through both the vagueness of the proposals and the lack of published data.

I have also done a bit of digging into asylum outcomes specifically for Syrians, Afghans and Ukrainians, for reasons many will already be familiar with, but which I have also explained below.

Asylum

Looking at the asylum system generally, the initial decision backlog has reduced, but as I explain below this must be considered together with the appeals backlog to get a proper picture of where things stand. At the end of September 2025 there were 62,171 applications waiting for an initial decision, relating to 80,841 people. This is 36% lower than the previous year.

The Home Office does not report on the size of the combined backlog, instead referring to figures from June 2024 which were already at a record high, and we know from the tribunal statistics that things have not improved since then.

There has been a 13% year on year increase in the number of people claiming asylum. 41% of them (45,183) arrived via the Channel, 11% (12,176) arrived via other irregular routes, 38% (41,461) were able to enter with a visa for another route.

Some data which first featured in the previous quarterly release is a breakdown of the type of visa held by those claiming asylum. This feels like a politically motivated release but is interesting nonetheless (I noticed a couple of other new releases today that are also in this category, on refugee integration outcomes and organised immigration crime).

Of those people who did have leave when they claimed asylum, 34% (14,243) held a study visa, 32% (13,427) held a work visa, 20% (8,258) held a visitor visa and 13% held other forms of leave. The first two categories here are likely to be those targeted by the government’s vague proposals around asylum support, although it is unclear how many people in this category are working and accessing asylum support, given the need to meet the destitution test.

The asylum grant rate has dropped from 54% in the year ending September 2024 to 45% for the year ending September 2025. As dedicated readers will be aware, a large proportion of these refusals will be unlawful and eventually overturned due to poor decision making by the Home Office. In the meantime, theses cases simply move to the appeals backlog, and the people in the system continue to wait.

While I am on quality of asylum decisions, I will note that table ADQ_01A in the immigration and protection data, on the Home Office’s own checks on decision quality, has still not been updated since the 2023/24 data which showed that only 52% of decision were passing their own checks. And that is the Home Office marking its own homework.

And while I am on the mysterious disappearance of previously reported statistics, I will also note that the Home Office continues its silence as to why it has stopped publishing data on asylum claims based on sexual orientation. The page simply refers to data from 2023 and links to a page last updated in August 2025 without noting or explaining the absence of an update since then.

Moving onto specific countries now. For Syrian claims, table Asy_D02 shows that in 2025 there have been five grants of protections status to Syrian nationals (main applicant and dependants). There have been 26 refusals but half of those were on third country grounds. We do not know about decisions and outcomes on settlement protection claims for Syrians this year because the Home Office does not provide its settlement data broken down by nationality and status held for each quarter. So the most recent data we have is for 2024 as a whole which is not useful.

I have also looked at Ukrainian protection claims, mainly so that I can mention that UNHCR has released a statement last week saying that no part of the country is safe and there is no internal flight alternative. This is the main basis on which the Home Office has been refusing these claims. For more, see my write up from June.

In the period July to September 2024 there were 31 grants of protection to Ukrainians and 1 refusal. In the same period this year there were 27 people granted and 792 refused. There has been no corresponding increase in applications that would explain the increase in refusals – 488 people claimed in the year ending September 2024 and 1,857 in the year ending September 2025.

Next, looking at Afghan nationals, 8,156 people applied in the year ending September 2025 and 7,494 last year. There were 1,235 people refused in the previous year (6,890 grants) and 7,621 in the year ending September 2025 (5,274 grants). The Home Office reports that the grant rate was 36% for the year ending September 2025 and people still cannot be forcibly returned to Afghanistan. Three people were returned to Afghanistan in the period July to September 2025, I assume these were voluntary.

Many of these refusals are being withdrawn at appeal stage and the Home Office should start being transparent about the precise numbers of these decisions which are wholly unsustainable, as well as explaining what the plan is for those people who are refused a grant of leave in the knowledge that there is nowhere to send them.

It is also interesting to contrast the high number of refusals of in country Afghan claims with the data on resettlement routes, where 88% of the small number of people who were resettled in the year ending September 2025 were Afghan nationals. Presumably this is at least in part due to the government’s data breach as revealed earlier this year.

Detention and returns

There was a 17% increase in the number of people entering immigration detention, to 22,661, in the year ending September 2025. Over half of the people who left detention were released on immigration bail and just under half (43%) of people leaving detention were removed from the UK. The Home Office summary says that the 17% increase may reflect the similar increase in the number of people being returned.

At the end of September 2025 there were 1,962 people in detention, up 12% from the previous year. Over half of the people leaving detention during this period did so because they are released on immigration bail, whereas less than half (43%) were removed from the UK.

There has been a 22% year on year increase in enforced returns, the Home Office says that this is in part down to the reallocation of 1,000 staff to immigration enforcement (I am curious as to which part of the Home Office was deemed to be overstaffed to the extent they could spare that many people without any detrimental impact on its own performance).

Nearly a third of the returns were asylum related (both voluntary and enforced). Just over a third of the asylum related returns were Albanian nationals (3,122) followed by Brazilian (1,723), Indian (1,027), Colombian (414) and Pakistani (395) nationals.

Family

The data on family routes shows that the number of partner grants continues to drop, by 22% over the year to September 2025 as 67,537 family visas were granted. This is partly a result of the increase in applications made before the increase to the minimum income requirement.

What would be useful to see and what is not made clear by the Home Office is to what extent the increase in the minimum income requirement has driven people into the ten year route, where they would previously have been eligible under the five year route. Similarly, there is no break down by whether someone is in the ten year family route as a parent or a partner.

Another data gap concerns the number of people who are forced to remain in the ten year route beyond ten years, for example because they cannot afford the application fee for indefinite leave to remain (for which there is no fee waiver available). Yet another gap is the number of families relying on a settled family member instead of a British citizen one (given concerns that this group may also be affected by next year’s changes).

The significance of knowing who is in the ten year route and why has been increased by last week’s earned settlement proposals which seem to indicate that those unable to meet the standard requirements of Appendix FM may be subject to different treatment.

Fee waivers

Briefly on fee waivers, the data shows a 55% grant rate for the period July to September 2025 (table FW_01, calculated as a percentage of total grants and refusals made in that quarter). The same period two years ago had a grant rate of 63% and the year before that 72%. Fees haven’t exactly gotten cheaper in this time. A year ago the grant rate was down to 45% so at least things have improved since then.

Settlement

The data on settlement is likely to become an area of greater interest once the government has implemented changes following its earned settlement consultation. For now, we can see that the majority of settlement grants are made under the EU Settlement Scheme, where this can take place automatically without the need for the person to apply.

Excluding settlement under the EU Settlement Scheme, we can see that most settlement grants are currently made to people in work routes, then family routes, then refugee routes. If last weeks proposals are brought in for those who are already here with refugee status, we can expect to see that refugee figure reduce to presumably close to zero for the next five years. The effect on family and work route numbers is more difficult to ascertain because of the different groups within these categories who would be affected in different ways.

Work routes and sponsor licences

The number of Health and Care Worker visas issued to people in a Caring Personal Service occupation fell by 81% to 5,188, in particular in the latest quarter which reflected the period when the Home Office closed the care worker route to new overseas applications.

Data on sponsor licences shows that the number of organisations holding sponsor licences continues to increase. At the end of September 2025 there were 122,020 skilled worker sponsors up from 106,215 a year ago. Temporary work sponsors were up from 4,535 to 4,828 and student sponsors were slightly down from 1,053 to 1,011. 54% of sponsor licence applications decided in the year ending September 2025 were granted and the rest were either refused or withdrawn.

Students

With students, I don’t think this is particularly clear from the below chart but the Home Office summary says that in the year ending March 2025 there was around one dependant for every 20 main applicants. This is a decrease from around six dependants for every 20 main applicants for the year ending September 2023. To me even the larger figure seems fairly low, given the disproportionate amount of scaremongering that has taken place around student dependants.

The new international student levy was confirmed in yesterday’s budget and so it will take a while before we can see whether that has any impact on numbers.

The number of people moving from the student route into the graduate route increased by 10% to over 237,000 in the year ending September 2025.

Conclusion

If you still haven’t had enough statistics after all that, the Office for National Statistics has also published data today, including on net migration which is reported to be 204,000 for the year ending June 2025, around two-thirds lower than a year earlier (649,000). It isn’t difficult to imagine a point at which the government will need to re-examine its commitment to making the UK as miserable for migrants as possible.