backlog

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokeswoman, Lisa Smart, told the BBC that Labour should be "speeding up asylum processing to bring down the backlog and end hotel use once and for all".

A large backlog of asylum applications and shortage of long-term housing options have led to a "much larger reliance" on hotels since 2020, according to the University of Oxford's Migration Observatory.

There is a backlog in the US of about four million asylum cases waiting to be heard, and for many like Maria, the process takes years.

This, combined with a recent fall in applications has meant the overall backlog of asylum cases has fallen compared with the end of June 2024.

A former justice secretary told us these types of appeals backlogs are often caused by "poor casework management" from the Home Office during the initial application phase.