Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress her Department has made on improvements in service standards to visa and asylum applications; and whether it is on target to meet its goal to return to a 20 day service standard by March 2023.

The latest decision waiting times for visa applications made inside the UK are published on Gov.uk.

• Visa decision waiting times: applications outside the UK
• Visa decision waiting times: applications inside the UK

Individuals may wait longer for a decision if their application is not straightforward, and more information is required. Where priority and super-priority visas have been applied for, these will remain at the head of the decision-making queue. The Home Office are working hard to ensure that service standards are met across all visa application routes.

The Home Office does not currently have a service standard to decide initial asylum claims. A new accelerated service standard is being developed and we are testing the impact of several coordinated initiatives, including enhanced screening, case triage, centralised workflow and streamlined decision templates.

We have already made progress in prioritising older claims, high harm cases, those cases with extreme vulnerability, children and new flow cases following the introduction of the Nationality & Borders Act, whilst those in receipt of support are a priority for caseworkers considering legacy cases.

Whilst we are unable to offer specific timescales to individuals at this time, we are working hard to reintroduce service standards in line with the Nationality and Borders Act to improve the level of service we provide to those who claim asylum.

The number of asylum decision makers in the Home Office has increased from 614 in 2021/22 to 1,073, an increase of 75% with ongoing recruitment strategies in place to retain and increase the number of asylum decision makers.