Asylum backlog
Number of asylum cases awaiting an initial decision from the Home Office.
64.4k cases
-48.4% vs 2024
As of 2025
Historical trend
Trend summary
Asylum backlog was 64.4k in 2025, down from 124.8k in 2024.
Trend
- Over the available record (2010–2025), it has ranged from 7.2k in 2010 to 160.9k in 2022.
- The latest reading is above the record average of 55.1k.
Context
- Home Office publishes asylum statistics quarterly; the backlog is a stock measure of cases awaiting an initial decision.
- Backlog figures exclude cases at appeal stage, which are published separately by HMCTS.
Generated from the published series — describes direction, magnitude and range only, with no editorial judgement or forecasts.
About this indicator
- Source
- Home Office
- Update frequency
- Monthly
- Last updated
- 10 August 2026
- Next update
- 10 September 2026
- Licence
- OGL v3
- Direction
- ↓ Falling
Statistics
- Latest
- 64.4k cases
- Period high
- 124.8k cases
- Period low
- 64.4k cases
- Period average
- 94.6k cases