Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of guidance on customer service standards applicable to applications for British Citizenship which have not been decided by her Department within six months.

The guidance explains that the department will write to applicants when their application cannot be decided within service standard to explain why that is and what will happen next. Transparency Data published in May 2023 showed that 98.4% of straightforward applications are decided within the service standard. For those that are not, the applicant will receive a bespoke letter detailing next steps.