Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to reduce waiting times for immigration decisions.

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.

UKVI is 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 more efficient technology, including digital interviewing, moving away from a paper-based system, and 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).