Author
Number of staff and nature of the determining authority
| Name | Number of staff | Ministry responsible | Is there any political interference possible by the responsible Minister with the decision making in individual cases by the determining authority? |
| Home Office Visas and Immigration (UKVI), Asylum Casework Directorate | 597 | Home Office | No |
Source: Home Office. The number of staff is valid as of March 2020.
Responsibility for the asylum process rests with the Secretary of State for the Home Department, who is a government minister (the Home Secretary). Within the Home Office, asylum decision-making is allocated to a department called UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) and within this to the Asylum Intake and Casework Directorate. The Home Office is responsible for all aspects of immigration and asylum: entry, in-country applications for leave to remain, monitoring compliance with immigration conditions, and enforcement including detention and removal.
The operational guidance of the UKVI is available online. It includes inter alia asylum instructions on the decision-making process, on screening asylum seekers and routing them to regional asylum teams; as well as on asylum applications involving children or how to make decisions about detention of asylum seekers. Moreover, country of origin information (COI) reports are also made available online and are frequently quoted by other countries’ authorities.