The Unity Project shares analysis of the data on Change of Conditions (CoC) applications included in the UK Visa & Immigration Transparency Data, which is published quarterly.
This quarter we have some good news to report. The Home Office has started to address the enormous decision making backlog which it had allowed to develop in 2024. However decision times are still extremely long, and the limited data we have on recent success rates is not encouraging.
Applications remain high
- 1,009 applications were submitted in Q1 of 2025.
- Over 1000 applications were submitted in each of the last three quarters.
Prior to Q3 of 2024, the only time applications were above 1000 per quarter was during the peak of the COVID pandemic (2020-2021). This is a clear indicator of the severe destitution experienced by growing numbers of people subject to NRPF, which has been widely reported, including by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, IPPR and the Bevan Foundation.
Addressing the CoC decision backlog
- The Home Office significantly increased the number of decisions it made this quarter. In Q4 of 2024 they made only 593 decisions, whereas in Q1 of 2025 they made 1,735 decisions.
- Consequently, the total number of pending applications – the decision backlog – has decreased by 35% from 2,104 to 1,378. This is a significant improvement and should be commended.
- The Home Office has finally provided a decision on the application pending from Q4 2022, which means the current oldest unresolved application is from Q2 of 2023.
While this is an improvement, it is important to note that the backlog only developed from Q3 of 2023. Prior to that date, the Home Office only ever left a handful of applications pending from quarters preceding the most recent one. The number of pending applications was never much greater than half the number of applications submitted that quarter, usually around 500.
In those days, each quarter the Home Office cleared the vast majority of applications left over from previous quarters and processed around half of the applications from the current quarter. This was true even during the peak of the Covid period, when the number of CoC applications jumped to nearly six times its current level.
Then for some reason, Home Office decision making halved in Q3 of 2023, and (with the exception of Q4 of 2023) it remained low until the end of 2024. Hopefully the initial data from 2025 indicates that whatever capacity issue they were facing has been addressed and the backlog will continue to fall over the coming year.
Decision delays remain severe
As we explained in our last briefing, published data on average decision times is misleading due to the high number of applications still pending at the time of each quarterly data release. In that briefing, we predicted that average decision times for 2024 would eventually exceed 100 days. We were correct – according to the data in this most recent release, the average for 2024 was 111 days. It is almost certain to rise still further – we now predict to more than 120 days – as the Home Office works its way through the backlog. Watch this space.
Historically low success rates
- The Home Office has only granted 166 of the 1009 applications made in Q1 of 2025.
- The success rate for Q1 of 2025 stated in this data release is 68%. We expect this to be revised down considerably in future briefings (see below).
- The current success rate of all the decisions made on applications submitted in 2024 is 54%. We believe this figure gives a more accurate picture of current decision making, although it is probably still too high.
It is only possible to accurately interpret the Home Office’s success rate data for any given quarter once most of the applications from that quarter have been processed. The most recent quarter for which we have accurate success rate data is therefore Q2 of 2024, from which there remain only 39 pending applications. The success rate then was just 44%. This is a historic low, down from 73% a year earlier.
We have observed that success rates tend to be revised downwards as pending applications are dealt with. It appears that applications which are left pending for a long time are more likely to be rejected, which brings down the average. We might speculate that this is because Home Office caseworkers leave complicated cases till last. It will be interesting to see if this phenomenon continues over the coming quarters – the dynamics created as caseworkers go through the backlog may be different to those of normal times.