Asylum seeker waited more than four years for a decision on his application

What happened

Mr T applied for asylum in the UK in 2006. The organisation responsible for handling immigration and asylum cases at that time refused his application and considered compulsorily returning him to his home country. In 2009 Mr T made further representations to be allowed to stay in the UK and he was given public financial support. He and his representatives continued to ask UKVI for a decision throughout 2010 but received very few responses. UKVI put Mr T's case into an already large backlog of old asylum cases, and did not decide what to do until the end of 2013, when it rejected his further submissions.

What we found

Mr T's case should have been prioritised because he was getting public financial support. But UKVI put his case into the backlog of old asylum applications for four and a half years. Mr T suffered an unnecessary delay in receiving a decision. However, as his applications had all been rejected, there is no reason to think that, had his most recent application been dealt with earlier, there would have been a positive outcome. We considered that Mr T had benefitted from the delay by being able to remain in the UK during this time, and so did not suffer an injustice.

Putting it right

We did not make any recommendations because we did not find any injustice.