Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has made additional resources available for processing visa applications impacted by the earthquakes in Turkey.

By working with TLS, the commercial partner, we are continuing to provide access to Visa Application Centres (VAC) throughout Turkey. Adana VAC increased its opening days from 3 to 5 days a week to meet demand closest to the earthquake area. There are also VACs in Ankara, Antalya, Bursa, Istanbul, and Izmir, many of which continue to provide 5 day a week capacity for those looking to apply for a UK visa under one of our current visit, family, work and study routes and enable those who have already applied to submit their biometrics.

UKVI will aim to process any compassionate cases as quickly as possible in line with current guidance.

Should individual circumstances require a quicker decision, applicants should raise this with visa application centre staff when submitting their biometrics and UKVI will consider this as part of their wider application.

If applicants have an existing visa application and have been impacted by the earthquake, then they should please contact the UKVI Contact Centre, details can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/contact-ukvi-inside-outside-uk.