Ministry of Justice figures show 156,000 appeals open in June, 90,000 of them asylum. Yet new appeals fell 21% in a year, and the new authority would not hear cases until late 2027.
People who appeal a refused asylum claim in England and Wales now wait well over a year for a decision, and Parliament is deciding who should make it. A Commons committee has been scrutinising a bill that would replace the judges of the immigration tribunal with trained adjudicators who need not be lawyers.48
The Home Office says the case is the backlog. About 156,000 appeals were outstanding in June, 90,000 of them asylum appeals, which it calls the highest level on record.2 The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) figures behind that show a mean of 72 weeks to clear an asylum appeal, and 65 weeks across all immigration appeals, 13 more than a year earlier.1
The explanation on the record is a pipeline. In the year to June, about 61,000 asylum appeals were lodged and about 31,000 decided, the Home Office says, so appeals arrived at about twice the rate they were decided.2 Colin Yeo of the Free Movement website argues the Home Office let a backlog of first decisions build, cleared it quickly, and refused many claims that were later withdrawn or overturned.5
The latest quarter shows the flow turning. All new tribunal appeals fell 21% on a year earlier, while cases disposed of rose 30%.1 For asylum, new appeals dropped from 14,749 to 11,596 between the first and second quarters of 2026 and concluded cases rose from 7,789 to 8,709. The open asylum caseload still grew, but by 2,891 rather than 7,117.56
Most appeals begin with a Home Office refusal, so the speed and quality of those decisions set the queue. Of the 8,709 asylum appeals concluded in April to June, 37% were withdrawn, and of those a judge decided, 39% were allowed, Free Movement reports from the MoJ data.5 The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, puts overturn rates for protection refusals at 36% to 40% for April 2025 to March 2026.3 Yeo reads this as evidence of weak first decisions; the Home Office says the system cannot cope with the volume.52
Under the bill, an Independent Immigration Appeals Authority would replace the tribunal. The Home Office describes “professionally trained and independently appointed adjudicators”.2 They would not need legal qualifications or legal experience, the House of Commons Library notes.4 The government argues a wider recruitment pool would speed up decisions; critics say the body would be less expert and less independent.4
Public Law Project says the Home Secretary would appoint the authority’s chair, who would in turn appoint the body that writes its procedure rules.7 The Bar Council objects to a body “sponsored by a minister who is a party to every immigration appeal”, and warns of a real risk of legal error.6 UNHCR supports cutting the backlog but says the framework risks “falling short” of that aim, and points to Australia, which scrapped appeal bodies criticised for lacking legally qualified members.3
The timing matters. The authority is expected to hear its first appeals in late 2027, and the government has conceded the tribunal will run in parallel for some considerable time, according to Public Law Project.97 At April to June’s pace of 8,709 concluded a quarter, the open asylum caseload alone would take about ten quarters to clear even if no new appeals arrived. The tribunal will therefore carry most of today’s backlog whatever MPs decide.
The caseload is at a record and judges alone cannot clear it. A trained, wider pool of adjudicators, with a right of appeal to the Upper Tribunal on points of law, would be faster.2
What the authority would cost: the government says costs will be set in a business case, and transition costs are not monetised, according to Public Law Project. How its adjudicators would be selected and trained, since criteria are left to later rules. Whether the second-quarter slowdown holds.
The Commons committee is due to report by 3 November, after which the bill moves to the full House and then the Lords.8 The MoJ publishes its next quarterly figures on 10 December, which will show whether the April to June slowdown held.1 If the bill becomes law, the authority is expected to begin hearing appeals in late 2027.9