Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is being taken to accelerate the Priority Service for employers and employees using the Certificate of Sponsorship Scheme.

Priority Service decisions are typically made within five working days once payment is received, significantly faster than our current service level agreement for standard applications.

This expedites requests for additional undefined certificate of sponsorship (CoS) allocations and annual CoS allocation changes and we have already this year increased the availability of the priority service by 20% with a view to increasing further throughout the financial year.