Asylum appeal backlog at record high, new figures show

New Ministry of Justice figures show the UK asylum appeals backlog has reached a record high, even as the main backlog of people waiting for an initial asylum decision has fallen.

The latest figures, reported on Thursday, show 87,450 asylum appeal cases were waiting at the end of March 2026. That is 72% higher than a year earlier and more than seven times the 11,660 cases recorded in 2016.

The average time to clear an asylum appeal also lengthened. The mean wait rose to 67 weeks, up from 54 weeks a year earlier.

The figures point to a shift in where pressure now sits in the asylum system. The backlog of people awaiting an initial asylum decision fell to 48,758 at the end of March 2026, making the appeals queue larger than the first-instance backlog.

A backlog that has moved downstream

The appeals pile-up is the latest sign that progress in speeding up initial decisions has not been matched by faster tribunal throughput.

Earlier reporting in March said Home Office statistics showed more than 80,000 asylum appeal cases waiting at the end of 2025. That same reporting said the initial asylum backlog had been reduced to about 64,000 by the end of December 2025.

That pattern matters because it suggests pressure may be moving from the first stage of the process into the appeals system rather than disappearing.

The latest first-quarter 2026 figures also showed 40% of appeals succeeding, down from 43% in the same period a year earlier. Earlier reporting had suggested roughly two-thirds of appeals were overturning initial refusals, reinforcing concerns that poor first-instance decision-making may be feeding tribunal demand.

Political and financial stakes

The backlog has practical and political consequences. People waiting for a final appeal outcome are generally not removable and are often kept in government-funded accommodation.

That makes the appeals queue a direct pressure point for spending, capacity and delivery. The number of asylum seekers in hotels was reported to have fallen to 20,885 at the end of March 2026, down 35% from 32,326 a year earlier, but the growing appeals backlog still complicates efforts to reduce hotel use further.

The issue is also politically sensitive because the government has promised to end asylum hotel use by 2029 or sooner. A record appeals queue makes that pledge harder to meet, both by delaying final outcomes and by prolonging accommodation costs.

The figures increase pressure on the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and the wider UK government to show that asylum processing can be sped up without simply shifting the bottleneck into the courts.

The Public Accounts Committee and refugee groups have previously highlighted the wider costs of delay, including the burden on taxpayers and the strain on tribunal capacity.

What happens next

The next questions are whether ministers set out fresh measures to speed up appeals, expand tribunal capacity or improve the quality of first-stage decisions.

Further attention will also fall on the next official release of tribunal and asylum statistics, which should show whether the backlog is still growing, stabilising or beginning to fall.

For now, the figures leave the asylum system with a clear problem: initial decisions have improved enough to reduce one queue, but appeals are now the main pressure point.