On caseworking capacity, the Home Office told us that caseworker numbers had fluctuated in recent years, rising from 623 in 2021 to 2,547 in 2024 before reducing to 2,168 in 2025. The NAO found that increased demand for caseworker capacity to tackle a backlog of claims awaiting decisions in 2023 meant the Home Office relaxed its recruitment arrangements, resulting in some newly recruited staff being ill-suited to making complex decisions on asylum cases, which in turn affected decision quality.52 In a rolling twelve months to May 2025, 42% of sampled decisions had significant or fail errors.53 The Home Office told us it had “a comprehensive training programme and mentoring framework in place to support retention and improve career progression opportunities” for asylum caseworkers.54 It said attrition among caseworkers had reduced to 22% in December 2025, its lowest reported level since 2018–2019.55