The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration has published its annual report summarising the department’s activities over the period 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024. All 21 inspection reports published during this period were submitted by the previous inspector David Neal, who was in post until 20 February 2024. Since 3 June 2024 previous inspector David Bolt has been in place on an interim basis.

Echoing the often expressed frustrations of his predecessor, the inspector notes that:

Only three of the 21 inspection reports published during the 2023-24 business year met the ministerial commitment to lay reports in Parliament within eight weeks of receipt (subject to both Houses of Parliament being in session), all of which were published only after David Neal’s departure when the spotlight was on this issue.  

The inspector said that there has been a commitment on the part of ministers and senior officials to improve this situation, but the true test will be seeing how quickly new reports are published over the rest of the 2024/25 inspection period.

The report also says that:

Overall, the 21 reports contained 104 recommendations, of which 77 were fully accepted, 21 partially accepted, and six not accepted. The percentage of fully accepted recommendations (74%) is an improvement on the previous year (69%), while the percentage of ‘partially accepted’ recommendations fell (to 20% from 29% in 2022-23). Six recommendations were not accepted, compared with just one in 2022-23.

The inspector rightly notes that acceptance is not the same as implementation “as the inspectorate has too often found when it has returned to re-inspect an area, and again in 2023-24 re-inspections identified that earlier recommendations had been accepted but had not been implemented”. The Home Office has apparently been working to improve this and is sending the inspectorate regular updates on implementation of recommendations for the first time since 2019, which is obviously a very positive step.