New figures released today show the asylum appeals backlog had reached 33,227 by the end of June 2024. And that was at a time when incoming appeals had fallen because of the last government’s pause on clearing the asylum backlog because of the Illegal Migration Act. Since then, decision making has resumed at pace and the number of incoming appeals will have dramatically increased again. The current backlog at today’s date will be a lot higher than 33,000.

To put this in perspective, the immigration tribunal disposed of 11,355 asylum appeals in the last 12 months for which figures are available.