The 24-week Statutory Timeframe for determining appeals in the First-tier Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber comes into force tomorrow, 12 August 2026, applying to all qualifying appeals lodged from that date.
ILPA is issuing this statement to set out our serious concerns about the rule, in particular how it will work in practice and the funding crisis it leaves unresolved for providers carrying the existing backlog. We are also concerned about the way in which its commencement has been communicated to the legal community.
Unrepresented appellants are already a growing proportion of those in the appeal system. We are concerned that they will struggle to gather and submit the necessary evidence within a 24-week window, and that this raises real questions about access to justice for the exact cohort of people who most need time and support to prepare their case.
Crucially, the 24-week rule applies only to new appeals. It does nothing for the significant backlog of existing cases, which may now wait up to three years for a decision. The problem is not just the backlog itself, but the absence of any corresponding funding mechanism to support the providers who are carrying it. Under the current fixed fee structure, providers cannot bill profit costs until a case concludes, so firms carrying backlog cases are sitting on “work in progress” they cannot recover for three years or even more, which is a direct disincentive to take on further asylum appeals, and a structural threat to firms whose business model depends on opening and closing files at a sustainable rate.
We wrote to the Legal Aid Agency on 8 July 2026 to set out these concerns in detail and to urge consideration of a meaningfully increased fixed fee for backlog cases, a new billing point allowing providers to bill a CLR fixed fee after one year, and a mechanism comparable to the COVID-era provision for hourly rates on online hearings. We are waiting for a response.
We are also concerned about the way in which commencement has been communicated to the legal community. Formal confirmation that the rule would commence on 12 August 2026 was issued on 7 August, five working days beforehand. Given the scale of the change and what is at stake for access to justice, we believe that providers would have greatly benefitted from earlier and fuller engagement, including on the funding question we raised in July.
Without urgent action with respect to legal aid funding, we anticipate that provider capacity will decline even further, and that access to justice for people in the system will suffer as a result.
We remain committed to working with the Legal Aid Agency, HM Courts & Tribunal Service and the Ministry of Justice to find the best possible solution on this. We believe the Tribunal is the best forum for determining appeals, but it should be properly resourced and any attempts to speed up the processing of appeals should not be at the expense of Appellants who do not have an opportunity to feed into this process.
- Document Date
- Tuesday August 11, 2026