immigration control will now be the responsibility of the Home Office and the system will be divided into two operations. Sarah Rapson will oversee the UK visa and immigration system and David Wood will head up immigration enforcement. Wood is the former director of operations for the UKBA and Rapson was previously CEO of the Identity and Passport Service.
A spokesperson for Kings Court Chambers said: “The Home Office is looking to implement the new UK immigration system very swiftly. The recruitment of two interim directors suggests that the Home Office has a strategic plan in place to completely overhaul the system and make it more efficient and less secretive.”
Permanent Home Office secretary Mark Sedwill said: “The Home Secretary has been clear that the new commands will have distinct cultures. The first will be a high-volume service that makes high-quality decisions, focusing on customer satisfaction for business travellers who want to come here legally and on specialist case working functions for UK asylum and complex cases. The second will be an organisation that has law enforcement at its heart and gets tough on those who break our immigration laws.”
