Source · Select Committees · Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 63
63
Acknowledged
Paragraph: 193
Report on waiting times and referral status duration in annual and quarterly statistics.
Recommendation
The Home Office should report in its annual and quarterly statistics on the waiting times for all cases within the system, the amount of time for which referrals are suspended, withdrawn, or closed, so that a better picture can be drawn of actual waiting times.
Government Response Summary
The government recognizes the importance of transparency and data and states it will keep under review what additional data can be published without compromising ongoing investigations and mentions steps taken to improve timeliness of NRM decision-making.
Paragraph Reference:
193
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
140. The Government recognises the importance of transparency and data in tackling modern slavery. The Home Office already publishes a range of statistics on modern slavery, including quarterly National Referral Mechanism (NRM) statistics and annual statistics on modern slavery offences. The Home Office will keep under review what additional data can be published without compromising ongoing investigations. 141. The Home Office is committed to improving the timeliness of NRM decision-making. A range of measures have been implemented to speed up the process, including increasing staffing levels, streamlining processes and improving data collection. As previously mentioned, to reduce the average decision making time, we have significantly increased our workforce, including through a major recruitment exercise to further boost decision-maker numbers by around 200 staff. We have increased productivity and improved performance through new initiatives including mainstreaming best practice. Teams where this approach was piloted last year saw significant productivity increases of 40%, more cases being allocated to decision-makers, and time taken to work on a case dropping by 30 days on average. This is now being rolled out across the commands.