The Home Office thanks the Independent Chief Inspector for his report.
We are pleased that the Independent Chief Inspector for Borders and Immigration (ICI) has
acknowledged the improvements that have been made in the Administrative Review case
working areas within the Home Office since the last inspection. In particular, it is pleasing to
note that six of the original fourteen recommendations have been closed. We recognise the
work needed to close the remaining eight across all three work areas that have been inspected,
namely, UKVI In-Country, Border Force and UKVI International. We are grateful that the ICI
acknowledged that the handling of Admin Review considerations by the In-Country team had
improved considerably and it is noted that they felt progress had been slower for overseas and
at the border case working areas.

We are grateful to the ICI for highlighting the further work that is required in addition to what has
already been done to demonstrate delivery of an efficient, effective and cost saving replacement
for the previous appeals mechanism and their suggestion of appointing one senior responsible
owner (SRO) for the Administrative Review system.
It is important to recognise that whilst there is some congruence with the two UKVI areas,
Border Force reactively consider these decisions at port as part of their function in securing the
UK borders. On that basis, it would make sense to allow Border Force operations to continue to
manage the process as they do currently and consider the question in the context of UKVI
operations.

The current position in UKVI is that a request for a review of a decision made in country under
the Points Based System is undertaken within Immigration and Protection Directorate and a
request for a review of an overseas entry clearance decision is dealt with by Visas and
Citizenship Directorate.

The Administrative Review decision making that was previously done
overseas has recently been repatriated to the UK. Now that repatriation is complete, UKVI will
consider whether all Administrative Review decisions can be made in a single unit. In the
meantime, UKVI will appoint a single SRO with responsibility for holding both sides (in country
and overseas) to account and ensuring coordination and consistency of process.
As this re-inspection involved three different work areas within the Home Office and highlighted
points particular to these areas, there follows a more specific response from each of the three
areas involved.

UKVI (In- Country) Response

We are pleased that the ICI has recognised the significant improvements made to the in-country
administrative review operation since the initial Inspection Report published on 26 May 2016,
and that these have been reflected in this report.

The Re-Inspection found that the handling of in-country ARs had ‘improved considerably’ and of
the 14 recommendations made, only three remain open for the in-country team, of which only
one relates specifically to in-country handling

(recommendation 3).
The ICI made positive comments about the improved training, performance management and quality assurance
delivered within the in-country team were welcome. It was also pleasing that the improved
feedback mechanisms instigated by the in-country team with the initial case-working teams and
litigation operations were recognised explicitly within the ICI report.
We are grateful to the ICI for identifying areas for further improvement for in-country, notably in
relation to case notes on rejected applications. The Manchester in-country team has already
instigated measures to address these issues, and will not be complacent in seeking further
improvements in addition to those that have been made in the last 12 months.

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Of the remaining two points outstanding (recommendations 10 & 14), these both cut across
broader Home Office. Taking each in turn, the prioritisation of processing times of applications
within in-country is currently undertaken in line with the original Statement of Intent that was
made in conjunction with the Immigration Bill (2013). The Statement of Intent defined Admin
Review applications were to be considered within 28 days of the application being made, which
means the operations are compliant with policy guidelines. The final point (14), relates to how
both Admin Review and the original immigration decision are assessed for improvements,
including learning from when Pre-Action Protocols (PAPs) or Judicial Review (JR) cases are
conceded. We are pleased that the report acknowledges that the in-country team has worked
hard to ensure that quality assurance and litigation data is now used to improve decision quality
in this area.

However this recommendation has been left open by the ICI as they state further work is
required by the Home Office to demonstrate that it had delivered an ‘efficient, effective and costsaving
replacement for the previous appeals mechanisms’. We can confirm to the ICI that we
are undertaking analysis of the changes made to appeals and Administrative Review and we
expect to publish the findings in due course.

Border Force
We are pleased that ICI acknowledged the progress made by Border Force in the way that it
handles administrative reviews, since its last inspection. They found in particular that
administrative review decision makers were knowledgeable, policy was comprehensive and
regularly maintained and that independence and separation of reviewer to original decision
makers was being maintained.

Following the last inspection Border Force carried out a systematic review of the administrative
review processes in place across each region to ensure that they were open, independent and
robust. Border Force Heathrow established a central case work unit in June 2017 which is now
responsible for reviewing all administrative review applications and other Border Force regions
have introduced improvements to ensure their processes continue to be open and independent.
Border Force Operational Assurance are developing an administrative review policy assurance
to address the issues highlighted by there-inspection around record keeping, quality assurance
review procedures and lessons learned activity. A review of all admin review cases is being
undertaken in conjunction with regional assurance managers to establish whether
administrative reviews are being conducted thoroughly and whether feedback and lessons
learned activity are being recorded and shared appropriately.

This will conclude in November
2017 and any further activity will be managed by the Operational Assurance Action Group which
oversees all Border Force lessons learned activity. Border Force are also carrying out a review
of guidance to assess whether a refresh is required and briefing will be provided to staff to
reinforce the need for accurate record keeping and to ensure all substantive issues raised by
applicants are fully addressed. This will be concluded by August 2017.

UKVI (International) Response
We are grateful to the Independent Chief Inspector for highlighting potential areas for further
improvement on the work already completed in our area and accept the Independent Chief
Inspector’s views on the following points:
Notwithstanding a delay in transitioning all overseas Admin Review’s (AR) to the International
Casework and Quality Assurance Team (ICQAT), UKVI was compliant with Home Office
guidance that a different person to the initial decision maker carried out the AR in all cases. The
re-inspection team identified that the work was underway to transfer the remaining overseas

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AR's to the by the end of April 2017. This transfer is now complete and all overseas AR’s are
processed by ICQAT ensuring a separate, dedicated team of reviewers, therefore meeting the
original recommendation. The re-inspection team opined that a full re-consideration of the
original decision by the AR reviewer might be impacted by UKVI’s document retention policy, to
retain documents only relevant to the original decision. ICQAT AR reviewers will continue to
conduct a full re-consideration of the decision including full referral to retained documents.
ICQAT AR reviewers also have the option to seek further information from the applicant or
sponsor to enable a full reconsideration to be completed.

We accept the Independent Chief Inspector’s view that record keeping in some cases was
insufficient in justifying the outcome of the review. We also accept the view that determining
whether all substantive issues had been addressed was impacted by the absence of the AR
being retained. Whilst the re-inspection team noted anecdotal comments from Entry Clearance
Managers on reviewing certain aspects of a case only and that such a practice could mean that
AR reviewers were not correcting all errors in every instance or conducting the required full
reconsideration, we have considered that the ICI team did not find evidence when reviewing the
sample that confirms that all errors were not being corrected. All overseas ARs are now
processed centrally by the International Casework and Quality Assurance Team (ICQAT),
ensuring greater consistency. Guidance will be re-circulated to ICQAT AR reviewers reminding
them of the AR case-work requirements on record-keeping.

We accept the Inspectors’ views that there was an absence of formal process to prioritise AR
applications. All overseas ARs are now processed centrally by the International Casework and
Quality Assurance Team (ICQAT), ensuring greater consistency. ICQAT have processes in
place to prioritise AR applications based on factors such as course start dates. A record of this
is kept within the ICQAT AR Decision Log which formalises the process. We will continue to
review the effectiveness of this approach and refine appropriately.

We accept the Inspectors’ views that of the 50 cases examined there was no recorded evidence
of quality assurance having been undertaken. All overseas AR’s are now processed centrally by
the International Casework and Quality Assurance Team (ICQAT), ensuring greater
consistency. Since the creation of ICQAT three thematic reviews have been undertaken by the
team and the findings have been shared with visa decision making centres globally. An
overseas Decision Quality Framework (DQF) has been designed akin to that used by the incountry
QAT team. The DQF is one of a suite IT products being developed to improve existing
quality assurance processes across all post decision routes. The DQF product is currently in IT
development, pending testing which is scheduled to take place during the latter part of June
2017.
Finally we accept the Inspectors’ views that ICQAT had taken a number of steps to ensure that
the learning from AR outcomes and quality assurance is recorded and shared. The transferring
all remaining overseas AR’s to ICQAT was completed in April 2017. This provides a global
oversight of AR outcomes and will support more comprehensive DQ analysis and effective
feedback loops. A suite of IT products, a Queue Management System (QMS), Decision Quality
Framework (DQF) and an MI Reporting Tool are being developed to facilitate this. The QMS is
currently under testing and the DQF (as reported above) is scheduled for testing in the latter
part of June 2017.

The MI Reporting Tool will follow. Once these products are fully integrated,
ICQAT will have a platform to be able to draw enhanced MI and quickly identify and respond to
trends driving changes to the assurance program. These IT products are agile in nature and will
be used for all post decision routes including PAPs and JRs which ICQAT plan to transfer from
overseas by the end of 2017.