Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to tackle the issue of citizenship applications taking longer to process than the service standard of six months.

The most recent published data on citizenship applications (November 2018) shows that 99.6% of applications were determined within the service standard of six months. Naturalisation is not an automatic process and the Home Office has to conduct a number of checks before it can reach a decision on whether to grant citizenship.

The extent and length of time taken to complete the checks on the more complex cases varies according to the particular circumstance of each case. The progress of these checks is closely monitored and decisions are made when the checks are completed.