Asked by: Stephen Pound (Labour - Ealing North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of whether it would be cost-effective and secure to allow visa applicants within the UK the option of collecting documents from a designated office instead of relying on second class post.
Answered by James Brokenshire
UKVI is continually reviewing the customer contact arrangements to deliver best value and improved customer service. We use a combination of dispatch methods to send documents to our customers; the option selected in each case is determined by a number of factors including cost, the required speed of receipt, the monetary value, the need for evidence of delivery and the size of the package.
In the UK Biometric Residence Permits are generally returned by courier and documents deemed to be lower value of sensitivity by second class post.
A project is in train to enable overseas customers to collect Biometric Residence Permits from a number of regional locations on their return to the
UK. We will be reviewing the success of this project carefully to inform future decisions on methods of returning documents to our UK customers. A
decision on establishing arrangements for customers to collect documents from UK would need to take into account many factors including the cost of providing reception facilities and the logistics of how to arrange the collections for people who are not located close to the decision making office.