MORE than 100,000 asylum-seekers were waiting for an initial decision on their claim last year, with almost two-thirds left in limbo for over six months, official figures show. 

The figure is far above the previous record set in 2020, when there were initial applications outstanding from 60,548 people, whose immigration status left them without permission to work and living off less than £6 a day. 

Refugee Action said today that the Home Office figures are “a damning indictment of the government’s total mismanagement of our asylum system.”

Chief executive Tim Noar-Hilton stressed: “Snowballing waiting times are devastating for refugees, who are unable [to] get on with their lives while they are stuck for years in a punitive asylum system.”

The figures show that of the 100,564 people with asylum claims pending at the end of 2021, 61,864 had been waiting for more than six months. 

Last year also saw 48,540 asylum applications, the highest number in almost two decades. 

Seventy-one per cent of applicants were granted refugee status in the first instance, according to the statistics. 

Separate figures on irregular migration to Britain – the first data set of its kind – reveal that 28,526 people crossed the English Channel in small boats. 

The five most common countries of origin were Iran, Iraq, Eritrea, Syria and Vietnam, states where a large proportion of people are recognised as refugees by Britain. 

Of those who arrived in small boats, 1,321 were from Afghanistan, up from 494 the previous year. 

Refugee Council chief executive Enver Solomon said: “It is important to recognise that seven out of 10 men, women and children arriving in the UK are found to be fleeing bloodshed and persecution, the likes of which is unfolding in Ukraine, and so are granted protection.”

The latest immigration figures also reveal that the government has only deported 11 people under its inadmissibility rules, introduced at the end of 2020.

The rules allow decision makers to refuse to process a person’s asylum claim if they are deemed to have travelled through or have a connection with a “safe third country.”

The Home Office then has six months to try and remove that person to an EU country willing to accept them. If it fails to do this, then the person’s asylum claim is processed.

Campaigners have long raised concerns that the new policy, which saw more than 8,500 asylum claims put on hold in 2021, would only exacerbate the asylum backlog.

Mr Solomon said the low number of removals under the policy show the rules are “pointless, harmful and completely ineffective.”

“We urge the government to spend more time on improving decision-making on cases on UK soil, and less on threatening to send people away while their claims are being processed,” he added.