Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what process is in place for individuals asking for information on a family member’s application for entry.

Where our records confirm that a customer’s passport is being held in the Visa Application Centre (VAC) in Khartoum, UK Visas and Immigration have contacted all those customers that have been issued or refused visa applications in our VAC in Khartoum and offering them a letter confirming that their passport is securely stored and attaching a digital copy of their passport, that may help support their travel out of Sudan and into a third country.

Where the passport is held in Nairobi or Pretoria and a named individual (either the applicant or a designated 3^rd party) is identified to return the passport to outside of Sudan, the passport can be sent (to the named individual) by courier or for collection from another visa application centre. For customers that have been able to exit Sudan, processes are in place to re-direct printing of their visa and endorsement on a Form for affixing a visa (FAV) to another VAC location of their choice for collection.

UK Visas and Immigration are currently operating within their global customer service standards across all of the main legal migration routes for customers who make an entry clearance application from overseas. If exceptional compelling and compassionate circumstances are raised, these will be considered in the usual way.

Details of current performance against these customer service standards are updated regularly and can be found at:

Visa decision waiting times: applications outside the UK - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)(opens in a new tab).

Customers are able to contact the UK Visas and Immigration contact centre, telephone: 0300 790 6268, Monday to Thursday (excluding bank holidays), 9am to 4:45pm and Friday (excluding bank holidays), 9am to 4:30pm.