Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 18 May 2022 to Question 1156 on Visas: Ukraine, in how many cases did Visa Application Centres (VAC) operated by TLS Contact which were serving Ukrainian refugees breach the (a) advice to provide appointments within 48 hours and (b) expectation to notify refugees within 24 hours of TLS receiving the vignette at the VAC as of 8 June 2022; with reference to the correspondence of 8 June 2022 from the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion to the Minister for Safe and Legal Migration, what systems she has in place to (i) monitor and (ii) address (A) errors and (B) delays with services her Department has outsourced to TLS; whether she is taking steps to expedite cases raised by MPs on these (1) errors and (2) delays; and if she will make a statement.

For part (a), we currently do not hold this data in a reportable format and would require development time with associated costs to extract this information, so this exceeds the cost threshold. For part (b), this is a contractual requirement and TLS report they have met in all cases the requirement of contacting customers via email within 24 hours of receiving the vignette at the VAC.

Regarding systems to monitor and address errors and delays, for part (a), our usual standard Service Level Agreement (SLA) within the contract is to provide appointments within 5 working days (or the next cycle for temporary locations that run less frequently). For Ukraine appointments, we reduced this SLA to 48 hours and monitored daily appointments being taken and capacity remaining, but as noted above we cannot provide this in a reportable format without exceeding the cost threshold. For part (b), we monitor this against the relevant contractual SLA and would address any breaches in line with this, but as noted above we cannot provide this information without exceeding the cost threshold.

To support with expediting cases raised by MPs on errors and delays, UKVI has also set up key escalation points including dedicated email inboxes for submitting requests and getting them reviewed and resolved by TLS. All individual cases raised are tracked to completion. There is also the telephone helpline in place for customers to request information.