Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average time taken to process applications for certificates of sponsorships was in the latest period for which data is available; and what steps his Department has taken to reduce time take to process those applications.

The Home Office does not routinely publish data on these matters; however, we have recently deployed an IT change which introduces a new compulsory field for required mandatory information which enables defined Certificate of Sponsorship applications to move more expediently through the system.