Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department plans to take to improve (a) transparency and (b) communication in the application system for spouse, fiancé, and unmarried partner visas.

UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) continues to prioritise Ukraine Visa Scheme applications in response to the humanitarian crisis caused by the invasion of Ukraine, so applications for family visa routes are taking longer to process. In addition, we continue to see unpredictable levels of demand across all visa routes globally following the easing of international travel restrictions.

UKVI are committed to providing customers with information on global visa processing times, and will continue to provide updates on the Visa decision waiting times page on GOV.UK and via our commercial partners’ websites. Spouse, fiancé, and unmarried partner applicants have been informed of extended processing times via email. Customers are encouraged to consider the information on processing times before booking travel to the UK.

UKVI transparency data is published at regular intervals and the latest data can be found at: Migration transparency data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).