He said it would require caseworkers to more than quadruple the number of asylum applications approved to more than 10,000 a month. Tim Loughton, a Tory member of the committee and a former minister, said it was “unrealistic” for the Home Office to believe it would achieve Mr Sunak’s target of clearing the legacy backlog by the end of the year. Officials admitted, however, that this will have to be achieved in face of an attrition rate of 28 per cent of staff leaving, although this is down from 48 per cent last summer.įigures published last week showed the number of asylum caseworkers was 1,280 at the start of May, only marginally up from the 1,265 in November.

She told the MPs on the home affairs committee that the Home Office aimed to increase the number of asylum caseworkers from 1,280 in May to 1,800 by the summer before doubling it to 2,500 by September. The Home Secretary said she was confident there would be a “substantial uptick” in progress on reducing the backlog because of a doubling in the number of asylum caseworkers, streamlining bureaucracy and improving staff productivity. The numbers keep rising because the boats keep coming, and that is the flow of casework, and that is what we are also working to reduce.” Mrs Braverman said: “It’s absolutely impossible to ever get down to zero because there are constantly cases coming into the system. Housing, feeding and supporting asylum seekers on the backlog is costing taxpayers about £3 billion a year, including £6 million a day accommodating 45,000 asylum seekers in hotels. However, the overall backlog of asylum claims, including the reduced number of legacy cases, has risen since November, from 131,292 to 137,583 in May. The Home Office has reduced the backlog of 92,000 so-called “legacy” asylum claims – those older than June 2022 – by 17,000 since November, when Rishi Sunak made his pledge to eradicate it by the end of this year.

They include 1,452 migrants who crossed the Channel on small boats this week, bringing the total so far this year to more than 9,000. The Home Secretary told MPs it could not be brought down to zero because “there are cases constantly coming into the system”. Suella Braverman has admitted that it is “absolutely impossible” to wipe out the backlog of asylum claims “because the boats keep coming”.

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