Thousands of asylum claims remain unresolved after three years, damning new analysis of Home Office data shows, as the government grapples to get the backlog down.
The National Audit Office (NAO) found that almost half – 56 per cent – of the 5,000 people who made an initial asylum claim in January 2023 did not have a final outcome by September 2025.
Some 2,812 people did not have a conclusion in their asylum claim, the report published on Wednesday said. Of those who did not have their case resolved, 1,369 were withdrawn, disqualified or suspended.
Ruth Kelly, chief analyst at the NAO, said the watchdog had counted these cases as unresolved because the Home Office did not know what had happened to these asylum seekers or where they were.
A quarter of the 5,000 cases were awaiting an appeal decision, and only nine per cent – 452- had been removed from the UK after their applications were unsuccessful.
The NAO also criticised the Home Office for poor data records, leaving policymakers and the public in the dark on key issues.
The Home Office has increased the number of initial asylum decisions that are made – with the number of cases awaiting a first assessment down 54 per cent on the peak of 134,046 in June 2023.
However this has shifted a lot of the backlog to the appeals stage – where asylum seekers challenge the first decision at tribunal.
It has also shifted housing pressures from asylum hotels onto local authority homelessness accommodation, with those evicted from hotels because of failed claims now seeking help from councils.
As a result, the first-tier immigration tribunal, which hears asylum appeals, is now under significant pressure. As of May 2025, the tribunalâs caseload included nearly 51,000 asylum appeal cases â an increase of 88 per cent from March 2024, the NAO said.
There were also nearly 22,000 cases based on Human Rights claims, such as arguing a right to family life in the UK, up 68 per cent from March 2024.
Ms Kelly said a âsevere capacity shortageâ of judges to hear appeals and insufficient legal aid were causing delays, adding: âWeâre seeing an increase in the number of asylum seekers who represent themselves at appeal and that causes delays and problems in the process.â
Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: âThese findings mirror what we see every day in our frontline services: an asylum system that is simply not functioning, where people wait months or even years for a decision, local councils are under-resourced, and costs keep rising.â
He said that the finding that so many people are still waiting on an outcome of their asylum claim was âshockingâ, adding: âWe support people who have fled untold horrors in places like Sudan and Afghanistan and want nothing more than to rebuild their lives, but the delays, bottlenecks and system failures push them into uncertainty, ill-health and too often, homelessness.â
Home secretary Shabana Mahmood unveiled radical reforms last month to ârestore order and controlâ to the UKâs asylum system, taking inspiration from Denmark.
Under the plans, refugee status will become temporary and subject to review every 30 months -with refugees removed as soon as their home countries are deemed safe. The wait for permanent settlement will also be quadrupled to 20 years.
Asylum seekers whose claims are denied will also be limited to make one appeal against their removal, instead of having the ability to make multiple challenges on different grounds.
The Independent has previously revealed how thousands of asylum claims were being removed from the system for reasons including claimants failing to attend interviews or appointments, and not filling in new âfast-trackâ questionnaires.
Applications could be withdrawn by the Home Office without the asylum seekersâ consent, official guidance seen by this newspaper said.
Referring to the glaring data gaps, the NAO report said: âThe Home Office does not hold data on how many people linked to refused claims are living in the community and required to report regularly, nor on how many have absconded from the immigration system. It also does not know how many of these individuals continue to receive accommodation or other supportâ.
The watchdog estimated that the Home Office and Ministry of Justice had spent around ÂŁ4.9bn on asylum in 2024/25, but that the cross-government spend was unclear.
Dr Peter Walsh, senior researcher at the Migration Observatory, said that the NAO report confirmed two challenges highlighted by the centreâs recent work â failure to remove people who had had their claims refused and the âpersistent gaps in data that hobble system-wide planningâ.
He added: “These structural issues contribute to rising caseloads, high accommodation costs, and long waits for decisions.â
Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: âOur 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.
âSuccessfully 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.â
A Home Office spokesperson said: âThe home secretary recently announced the most sweeping changes to the asylum system in a generation to deal with the problems outlined in this report.
âWe are already making progress, with nearly 50,000 people with no right to be here removed and a 63 per cent rise in illegal working arrestsâ.
