Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the criteria are for visa applications to be designated as (a) complex, (b) non-straightforward and (c) outside service standards; and how many such applications have been so designated in each of the last 10 years.

Visa applications are considered to be complex when an Entry Clearance Officer determines that additional information is required in order for a decision to be made.

There are no set standards for processing non-straightforward (identified as complex) by the caseworker. However, if an application is complex and expected to take longer than the standard processing timescale, UKVI will write to the customer within the standard processing time and explain what will happen next.

The published information on processing times for complex/ non straightforward visa applications is published as part of the Migration Transparency data, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/migration-transparency-data#uk-visas-and-immigration