Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average processing time was for a skilled worker visa in (a) December 2023 and (b) January 2024.

The Home Office makes every attempt to meet the service level agreement standard, but in certain cases additional checks are required which can mean visa requests take longer to process.

The latest data on performance against service standards is published through migration transparency data and can be found at: Migration transparency data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

The Home Office also publishes information on visa processing times for applications inside and outside the UK at: Visa processing times - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).