Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average time taken for a skilled worker application linked to a defined certificate of sponsorship to be approved is; what assessment she has made of backlogs for skilled worker applications linked to defined certificate of sponsorship applications; and what steps she is taking to resolve those backlogs.

Performance and efficiency of visa and sponsor licence processing is continually reviewed to ensure performance is as strong as possible.

Information on our immigration routes with service standards and whether they have been processed against these standards is available as part of our transparency data, at: Migration transparency data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

We are, however, currently flexing resources across all routes to ensure a robust response to the Ukrainian crisis while still processing standard applications within service standard wherever possible. As a result, customers with standard applications in study, work, and family routes may experience some temporary impacts to the processing of their application.