Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of people who use the priority service route for visa or settlement applications receive a decision within five working days.

Our aim is to process all applications under the five working day priority service within our service level agreement (SLA). Yet each individual case is considered on its own facts, which means some cases will inevitably take longer than others to conclude. Cases may take longer dependent on the circumstances of the case, for example, if the applicant is facing an impending prosecution or has a criminal record.

If an application is deemed complex and expected to take longer than the published SLA, UKVI will write to the customer within the SLA and explain what will happen next.

Data on our performance against the five working day priority service can be found in VC_02 of the published Transparency data: Visas and Citizenship data: Q3 2021 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)