Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what her Department’s target is for the time taken to approve a Standard Visitor visa for a person under 18.
Visit visa applications for a person under 18 are processed in-line with all visitor visa applications. The published target time for standard Visit visas is 3 weeks.
Following a surge in demand as international travel restrictions were reduced, visit visas, including standard visitor visa applications, are currently taking on average 7 weeks to process, however some applications might take longer.
UKVI are working hard to process applications to get back to the 3-week service standard; resources are focussed on reducing the current processing times and will continue to prioritise urgent compelling or compassionate cases across all workstreams.
UKVI encourages all customers to apply in good time ahead of intended travel dates, and customers can also make use of UKVI’s optional priority visa services for visit visas in certain locations.