Application Registration Card (ARC) is a credit card sized document issued to asylum applicants in the UK. Once issued, the Card has a validity period of 2 years, after which it may be renewed according to rules. Or a Card may be updated when biometric details change.
The process is:
- Applicant claims asylum
- Screening interview or Welfare Checklist completed
- Biometrics and Biographic checked and validated
- ARC fulfilled as a technical process based on existing valid data.
- ARC produced and sent by courier service to the Bail address as recorded on Caseworking systems.
Customers sometimes need to contact them “where business processes have not reached the expected high standards”. The complaints system changed in April 2020 “to improve the speed and accuracy of complaints handling, and drive up customer satisfaction”.
Complaints no longer go through Migrant Help. Instead, go to https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/asylum-registration-card-arc-enquiry to link to the tool and other documentation, which goes direct to the Home Office and initiates the Home Office standard complaints process.
The principal points of failure have been identified by the Government as:
- Immigration staff failing to request cards.
- Immigration staff failing to enrol accurate biometrics
- A failure in delivery
- A failure to update ARC on change of circumstances
- A failure to renew ARC according to rules.