Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps she has taken to ensure that target response times for visa decisions are met.

UKVI has faced extremely high pressures over the past two years. All visa routes have seen extremely high demand following the end of the pandemic and the easing of travel restrictions. The Home Office also prioritised capacity earlier this year to help people forced to flee their homes, as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, get to safety through our Ukraine visa schemes.

UKVI has been working hard to reduce processing times and is now back within service standard across a number of our visa routes. UKVI is working hard to speed up decision-making by rolling out better, more efficient technology, including digital interviewing, and moving away from a paper-based system, as well as recruiting more decision-making staff.

UKVI have updated guidance on expected waiting times so that customers have a realistic indication of how long their applications will take to be processed. We encourage customers to continue to refer to these updates as our processing times change on a regular basis. The link to this guidance for in-country applications is: Visa decision waiting times: applications inside the UK - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) and out of country applications is: Visa decision waiting times: applications outside the UK - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)