Home Office 'making progress' on UK immigration recommendations

16 Aug 2013 | Posted by Carl Thomas

Spot checks carried out by the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, John Vine, have found that the Home Office is "making progress" when it comes to implementing recommendations put forward by the inspector.

Earlier in the month, the inspector criticised the UK immigration officials for not fingerprinting thousands of illegal immigrants that are caught trying to enter Britain through France. However, the inspector has now released a report showing that in other areas the Home Office is making progress towards improving its services.

The Chief Inspector began carrying out spot check visits to monitor the system at the start of this year. This report, which covers the Public Enquiry Office in Croydon, the Command and Control Centre in Manchester and the East Midlands Reporting Centre, came up with some encouraging results on the first round of checks.

All three business areas were found to have made progress against previous recommendations from Mr Vine, while the staff and managers were all keen to continue improving the situation, but there were some issues when it came to record keeping. For example, East Midlands Reporting Centre was criticised for not keeping a record of queuing times.

Mr Vine, commented: "The Home Office is ultimately responsible for implementing my recommendations, and is accountable to the Home Secretary, Ministers, Parliament and the public for improvements to service delivery.

"These spot-check visits are an efficient and valuable accompaniment to my formal inspection programme. They allow me to see for myself if improvements have been made."

He added that he was "pleased to see evidence that the Home Office had acted upon my previous recommendations for these three business areas".