Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many applications were (a) approved and (b) denied under the scale-up worker visa route in each calendar year since 2022; and what the average waiting time was for a decision.

The Home Office publishes data on entry clearance visas, including Global Talent and Scale-Up Worker visas, in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on outcomes of visas (issued, refused, withdrawn, lapsed) are published in table ‘Vis_D02’ of the detailed entry clearance dataset. Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. Data is up to the end of December 2024.

An application which does not meet all the validity requirements for the Global Talent route is invalid and may be rejected and not considered. This information is not currently available from published statistics, and the relevant data could only be collated and verified for the purpose of answering this question at disproportionate cost.

Information on processing times of Scale-Up Worker visas and visas issued under the digital technology stream of the Global Talent visa is not currently available from published statistics, and the relevant data could only be collated and verified for the purpose of answering this question at disproportionate cost.