The Borders and Immigration Inspectorate is 10 years old
The ICIBI has published over 130 inspection reports and submitted more than 800 recommendations to the Home Office.
Since its inception in 2008 the ICIBI has published over 130 inspection reports and made more than 800 recommendations for improvements to the efficiency and effectiveness of the asylum, immigration, nationality and customs functions for which the Home Secretary is responsible.
Over the years, ICIBI has made changes to its ways of working to improve its own efficiency and effectiveness. These have included shortening the inspection timeline to ensure reports remain current, introducing re-inspections to check on progress in implementing recommendations, and creating a 3-year Inspection Plan to provide a better sense of the overall shape and range of ICIBI’s work programme, how planned inspections fit together thematically, and to signpost when particular topics will be examined.
At the outset, ICIBI produced a set of inspection criteria for inspectors to follow. This was last updated in 2013 and has served ICIBI well. However, some of the current 10 inspection criteria are relevant only to certain types of inspection, and this can create confusion about which ones are being applied and which are not in particular cases.
Partly for this reason, but primarily to make best use of the wealth of knowledge and experience ICIBI has gained over the past 10 years about the key factors that affect the efficiency and effectiveness of all asylum, immigration, nationality and customs functions, I am replacing the inspection criteria with a list of ‘expectations’.
These expectations will form the starting point for all future ICIBI inspections. Inspectors will look for evidence of, and test each of them, before examining any additional areas that are specific to the inspection in question.
The expectations are intended to be helpful not just to ICIBI inspectors, but also to the Home Office and others responsible for delivering these functions, as well as to anyone who encounters them and to other stakeholders. To that end, they are written in plain English, and no specialist knowledge of the borders and immigration system or of inspecting is required to interpret them.
David Bolt
Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration