Recommendation 7

As well as call volumes, we asked whether the AIRE service had underestimated the length of each call. The Department had historical data that suggested calls would take between 12 and 17 minutes. In contrast, Migrant Help based its bid for the AIRE service on an average call length of four minutes, and the Department accepted the bid on this basis.12 As a result, the AIRE helpline did not have the capacity to deal with the number of calls it received, answering only one-fifth of the calls it received between September 2019 and January 2020.13 We received written evidence from Asylum Matters, which told us that many asylum seekers and their caseworkers had lost confidence in AIRE and simply stopped calling.14 The Department explained that as the AIRE provider accumulated more data from issue reporting, its call speed has got quicker.15 In its written evidence to us, Migrant Help also told us that it had carried out a large recruitment and training programme.16 The Department explained that the performance of the AIRE service had since improved, and it was now regularly meeting 11 of its 12 key performance indicators. 9 Q 117 10 Qq 126–128; C&AG’s Report paras 17, 4.11 11 Qq 71, 86–87 12 Qq 92, 94–95; C&AG’s Report, para 2.13 13 Q 71; C&AG’s Report, para 12 14 ASY0006 - Asylum Matters 15 Q 92 16 ASY0001 - Migrant Help Asylum accommodation and support transformation programme 11 The Department said that in July 2020, the AIRE service answered 95% of calls within 60 seconds, against a target of 90%.17 The cost of the new service