The latest quarterly statistics for the tribunals covering the period January to March 2024 have been published today and in news that should not surprise anyone, the clearing of the legacy asylum backlog and increase in refusals has had a huge impact on the number of asylum appeals pending in the tribunal. The summary says that in the period January to March 2024 overall appeals lodged in the First-tier Tribunal increased by 57% compared to the same period in 2023, for asylum appeals specifically this increase was 330% to 10,000 cases. 49% of asylum appeals were allowed.

(Note: confusing, the Ministry of Justice reports January to March 2024 as Q4)

The average time to disposal of an appeal is reported to be 43 weeks across all appeals but as pointed out by Colin previously that is appeals that have already been concluded and will not reflect the current situation. That number is expected to start increasing substantially in statistics releases later this year. Unless action is taken extremely quickly to resolve this, it will have a massive impact on the cost of asylum support, particularly if the prohibition on people being able to work while waiting for the resolution of their asylum claim remains in place.

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