More than 40,000 asylum seekers have been waiting more than a year for a decision from the Home Office and 725 have been “living in limbo” for more than five years, according to figures obtained by the Refugee Council.
According to Home Office data the number of people waiting for an initial decision on their asylum application rose from 29,522 in December 2017, to 64,891 in December 2020 and then, in the space of less than two years, doubled to 122,206 in June 2022.
Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said in a statement, “Immediate action should be taken to address the huge backlog of men, women and children stuck in limbo while waiting years for a decision on their asylum claim, costing millions of pounds a day accommodating them in often poor quality hotels.”…