A father with a newborn baby and a mother with two children are among the asylum seekers made homeless by the Home Office after it wrongly withdrew their claims, it can be revealed.

The families were ordered to leave their accommodation and had financial support cut off for failing to attend interviews that they had not received invitations for because of the Home Office’s own errors.

The department has been ordered to reconsider the cases after the asylum seekers won a legal challenge at the first-tier tribunal, alongside two men from Iraq and Sudan, while 13 similar cases are yet to be heard.

The claimants are among more than 14,000 asylum seekers who had claims withdrawn without consent during a frenzied drive to meet Rishi Sunak’s pledge that he would clear the “legacy backlog” by the end of 2023.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Data obtained by the Observer under freedom of information laws shows the “implicit withdrawal” process, which removes the right to remain in the UK or receive housing and financial support, was used for one in six decisions made in the push – a dramatic rise on previous years.

Referring to the mother in the case, who is a 39-year-old woman from India, the judge said: “She is a lone parent of two children but no consideration was given to this by the Home Office when deciding to treat her asylum claim as withdrawn and directing her to vacate her accommodation with immediate effect.”

The court heard that although the woman lived at her authorised address, all letters regarding her asylum interview were returned to the Home Office as undelivered by Royal Mail, and it removed her claim from the system even after she informed officials they had not been received.

In a separate case, a 40-year-old asylum seeker from Hong Kong temporarily left his accommodation when his partner was due to give birth to their son, and did not receive his interview invitation until he returned and the date had passed.

Under Home Office policy, implicit withdrawal can be triggered for people deemed “non-compliant” with the asylum process, for reasons such as failing to attend interviews or return questionnaires, or leaving official accommodation.

Nelson said that official eviction letters wrongly claim that there is no right to appeal, despite the first-tier tribunal hearing numerous cases, meaning many people may not have attempted to challenge the decisions.

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