Biometric Residence Permits

(asked on 11th November 2020) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the number of people who have been unable to (a) work, (b) access healthcare, (c) access social security benefits and (d) enrol onto further or higher education courses as a result of the time taken by her Department to provide biometric residence permits.


Answered by
Chris Philp Portrait
Chris Philp
Minister of State (Home Office)
This question was answered on 8th December 2020

The Home Office does not hold the data in a way that would allow it to provide an accurate estimate of people who have been unable to (a) work, (b) access healthcare, (c) access social security benefits and (d) enrol onto further or higher education courses as a result of the time taken to provide Biometric Residence Permits (BRP). Finding the requested information would be likely to breach the disproportionate cost threshold.

The Home Office process includes daily checks on any failure by decision makers to request a Biometric Residence Permit and to identify any request for a BRP which has not been produced. The Home Office aims to deliver a BRP within 10 working days of an immigration application being approved.

The Home Office works closely with the DVLA, which produces BRPs, and TNT/Fedex, which delivers them, to ensure that service level agreements are met and performance is improved, through improved reconciliation reporting and clearer escalation processes.

The DVLA has an SLA to complete 90% of production requests within one working day and the remaining 10% within two working days. While this was met consistently until early 2020 the impacts of Covid-19 restrictions and safe working practices have caused occasional delays of up to four working days since April.

TNT/Fedex is required to attempt first delivery of 99% of BRP within two working days of collection from DVLA. This target was met up until February 2020 and is 91% since then.

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