The Home Office has apologised to asylum seekers granted leave to remain in the UK who then had their decisions retracted.
In some cases applicants were sent residence permits before being told by officials to cut them up.
Charities said they had seen a number of cases where people celebrated getting leave to remain and believed they were safe at last only to be told days or weeks later that a mistake had been made. Officials declined to say how many people had been affected by this error.
In one case an asylum seeker was jubilant after receiving a letter from Home Office officials stating: “Your claim for asylum has been successful and you have been granted refugee status and five years permission to remain in the UK.”
“I was so happy to receive this letter,” the asylum seeker said. “I and my family had been left in limbo for two years not knowing what was going to happen to me. But then a few weeks later I got another letter telling me the Home Office had made a mistake, that I hadn’t received refugee status after all and that I had to destroy the biometric residence permits they sent me.”
The second Home Office letter, marked official sensitive, states: “Unfortunately an incorrect grant of leave has been given due to a technical fault in our system. The case will therefore need to be reconsidered so that we can amend this.”
He was asked to return his biometric residency permit to a PO box address in Bristol.
“Please cut up the cards, take a picture of the pieces and send this to us in an email with the dispatch reference number provided to you once posted. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and we thank you for your patience.”
In a second case an Iranian couple received a phone call from Migrant help, a Home Office contractor, informing them that they had leave to remain.
“We had waited 19 months for a decision,” said one of the asylum seekers. “It was such a relief to get this news. But two days later we received another phone call saying it had been a mistake. It was such a great shock to us, particularly because in the second phone call they told us our case had been completely rejected, not just that they were still considering it.”
Two months later the couple received another decision from the Home Office, once again granting them asylum. “The whole thing was an emotional rollercoaster. When we got the decision granting us leave to remain the second time we doubted it was true. I said to my wife, it’s a joke, a cry wolf story.
In a third case a woman was evicted from a hotel because Home Office officials said she had been granted leave to remain although no formal grant letter was sent to her. In subsequent Home Office correspondence she was advised about how to voluntarily return to her home country.
Lou Calvey, the director of the charity Asylum Matters, said they were aware of multiple cases where grants of leave had been withdrawn by the Home Office because they said they had made a mistake: “It’s sheer torment. It has devastating consequences on people that have often waited for years for their decision, only to then have the rug pulled out from them.
“The chaos in government processing & decision-making is palpable. The new government urgently need to rebuild the basic functions of our asylum process.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Whenever we spot an issue with a case our team will work as quickly as possible to resolve it. We apologise for any inconvenience and distress caused. We are committed to improving the quality and accuracy of our decision-making, which will maintain the integrity of the system and help reduce delays.”
