LONDON, June 25 -- The government of the United Kingdom issued the following news: The Planning Inspectorate's Annual Report and Accounts 2025/26 has today been published. It tells the story of a year in which PINS made 19,600 decisions, granted permission on appeal for 23,000 homes to be built, and cut the open appeals caseload from 11,400 to 9,400 cases. Local plan examinations that once took 31 months to complete now take 19 and every statutory deadline on nationally significant infrastruc...
LONDON, June 25 -- The government of the United Kingdom issued the following news: Where a person is in the UK without valid leave to enter or remain, the Home Office needs to make and maintain contact with them in order to progress any outstanding application, to encourage the person to regularise their stay or depart the UK voluntarily, or in some cases to work towards an enforced removal. This inspection - which was conducted between September 2024 and February 2025 - examined how the Home ...
LONDON, June 25 -- The government of the United Kingdom issued the following news: When the present system of administrative reviews (AR) was introduced in 2015, replacing a raft of rights to appeal to the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal, the government's stated intention was to provide "a proportionate and less costly mechanism for resolving caseworking errors." At that time, the government committed to a service standard of 28 days for the Home Office to complete an AR, which it explained was...
LONDON, June 25 -- The government of the United Kingdom issued the following news: Overstaying is a complex issue for the Home Office. It is recognised that a substantial proportion of those in the UK without the right to be here entered the country legally and overstayed their leave. However, because responsibility for mitigating the risk and addressing the consequences of overstaying are split across different parts of the migration and borders system, and because of shortcomings in the avail...
LONDON, June 25 -- The government of the United Kingdom issued the following news: Solicitor General, Ellie ReevesKC MP,secures increased sentence formanresponsible foraseries ofrobberies and stabbings across the London Underground. Adel KerariofHammersmithand Fulham,London,had his sentence increased byoneyear and onemonthafter the Solicitor General Ellie Reeves KC MP referred his case to the Court of Appeal under the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme. The court heard how over two weeks in June ...
LONDON, June 25 -- The government of the United Kingdom issued the following news: The Environment Agency has secured an Enforcement Undertaking from Anglian Water Services that will see £275,000 go towards environmental improvement projects across Lincolnshire. This comes after two permit breaches led to unauthorised sewage being discharged into the North Sea. Anglian Water Services submitted theEnforcement Undertaking offer following a detailed investigation by the Environment Agency i...
LONDON, June 25 -- The government of the United Kingdom issued the following news: A robust and consistent process for refusing entry at the border is essential to effective immigration control and to national security. This inspection examined the current processes used by officials to assess whether an individual should be refused entry to the UK at the border. It was conducted at the full range of Border Force control points, including airports and seaports in the UK, as well as juxtaposed ...
LONDON, June 25 -- The government of the United Kingdom issued the following news: The Environment Agency has issued a warning letter to the River Roding Trust in east London following an investigation into unpermitted work carried out at Alders Brook, in Ilford. This follows previous warnings about damage that was done to a flood defence at Hertford Road, in Barking. The investigation found that work at Alders Brook in March this year damaged wildlife habitats, and led to the spread of invas...
LONDON, June 25 -- The government of the United Kingdom issued the following news: The Submarine Delivery Group (SDG), which is part of the Defence Nuclear Enterprise, is using advanced and additive manufacturing to improve submarine availability. The work of the SDG Additive Manufacturing (AdM) team, alongside industry and the Royal Navy, is reducing reliance on traditional supply chains, and building an enduring AdM industrial capability across the UK's submarine programmes. What are advance...
LONDON, June 25 -- The government of the United Kingdom issued the following news: Asylum casework is an area that the ICIBI has inspected several times in the past, most recently in 2023, shortly after the then Prime Minister's pledge to clear the legacy asylum decision backlog. That inspection raised concerns that the focus on clearing the backlog 'at all costs' had resulted in the prioritisation of quantity over quality, with a potential negative impact on the efficiency of the end-to-end as...