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<p>Until October 2018, there was a published Service Standard in place to decide 98%
of straight-forward cases within six months from date of claim. Whilst the operation
consistently achieved this for three years, the number of non-straight forward cases
awaiting a decision grew rapidly and it became clear that the former service standard
no longer best served those that used our services. For these reasons, former Ministers
agreed that we should move away from the service standard to reprioritise cases in
the short term, whilst we come to longer term arrangement for service standards that
meet the needs of all parties.</p><p>As a result, we moved away from the 6-month service
standard to concentrate on older claims, cases with acute vulnerability and those
in receipt of the greatest level of support, including Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking
Children (UASC). That has meant some claims that would have been categorised as straightforward
and received a decision within 6 months have waited longer.</p><p>However, it would
be difficult to attribute this to changes to the service standard, as asylum intake
has been significantly higher than expected levels since October 2018.. Published
statistics show that there were 35,566 asylum applications in the UK (main applicants
only) in the year ending December 2019, an increase of 21% from the previous year.</p><p>This
means that despite a number of interventions, the number of claims awaiting a decision
has grown.</p>
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