Home Office Updates Migration Transparency Data Through August 2026

The Home Office has published its latest migration transparency data, with Windrush Compensation Scheme figures for August 2026 released on 29 October 2026, the newest entry in a monthly series running back to the March 2026 dataset published on 28 May 2026. The collection covers Border Force, UK Visas and Immigration, Immigration Enforcement, and Passports, Citizenship and Civil Registration performance. No policy change accompanies this release; it is a data publication, and readers should treat it as such.

The Home Office states that the release complies voluntarily with the Code of Practice for Statistics. Voluntary compliance is not the same as accredited National Statistics status, and the department does not claim otherwise in the release. The statement of voluntary compliance and the pre-release access list sit on the department's Statistical compliance page, so anyone verifying who saw the numbers early must go there.

What does the Border Force table contain?

The Border Force table reports passenger clearance against published service standards, plus seizures of drugs, firearms and offensive weapons. It also lists items seized under the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species. Tax revenue protected through alcohol and tobacco detection, carrier liaison data and annual unit costs for processing passengers at the border complete the table.

What do the UKVI tables add?

Five separate tables cover UK Visas and Immigration. One reports replies to MP written correspondence across UKVI, Immigration Enforcement, Border Force and HM Passport Office, together with customer complaint performance and UKVI applicant survey results.

The asylum table reports quarterly and annual performance: the percentage of initial decisions within 6 months, the size and age of outstanding decisions (work in progress, or WIP), productivity rates, decision quality and the cost of processing an asylum application. It also covers appeal representation rates, human rights applications, change of conditions for those with no recourse to public funds, fee waivers, citizenship deprivation orders and the older live cases unit.

A third table, formerly titled Resettlement, Asylum Support and Integration, covers child transfers under the national transfer scheme, support applications under section 4 and section 95, and travel document volumes raised and despatched.

The sponsorship table counts new sponsor applications in each route and the number of registered sponsors across skilled worker, temporary worker and student routes. It includes average processing time in days, the percentage of student sponsors holding full status, and suspensions and revocations taken against sponsors.

Two further tables cover the Windrush task force's processing of status and citizenship applications, and route-by-route intake, service standard performance, WIP volumes, Life in the UK Test intake and pass rates, and the cost per decision for all applications, in-country and overseas.

What does the enforcement data show?

The Immigration Enforcement table counts foreign national offenders subject to deportation action living in the community, family returns data, and the average cost per day of immigration detention. It also reports rule 35 reports in detention centres, the number of pregnant women detained, use of force during removals from the UK, and the volume and value of civil penalties issued.

What changed for passports and civil registration?

HM Passport Office data has moved to the Passports, Citizenship and Civil Registration collection. That table reports monthly application intake, passports issued within service standard, and applications outstanding as WIP. It adds British Citizenship applications received, the percentage processed within standard, plus HMPO and citizenship applicant survey results. Civil registration data covers birth, adoption, death, gender recognition register entries, and marriage and civil partnership certificates, with GRO survey results.

Transaction Explorer data covers controlled drugs licences and compliance, right to rent checks for landlords and tenants, right to work checks for employers and job seekers, and view-and-prove status checks for migrants.

How current is the Windrush series?

The release lists six monthly datasets:

• August 2026 data, published 29/10/2026
• July 2026 data, published 24/9/2026
• June 2026 data, published 27/8/2026
• May 2026 data, published 30/7/2026
• April 2026 data, published 25/6/2026
• March 2026 data, published 28/5/2026

The release names the underlying documents but publishes no headline totals within them; users must open each file. General immigration statistics sit in the separate Migration statistics collection, and earlier transparency data sits on the National Archives website. The Home Affairs Select Committee has regularly requested much of this data, according to the release itself — a reminder that the collection exists because of sustained parliamentary pressure, not departmental initiative.