Home Office: Telephone Services

(asked on 17th July 2018) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will take steps to ensure that UK residents are not charged the rate applied to non-UK residents over and above network charges to access his Department's spousal visa helpline.


Answered by
Caroline Nokes Portrait
Caroline Nokes
This question was answered on 24th July 2018

For overseas customers, UK Visas and Immigration have a chargeable call rate of £1.37 per minute.

For UK Visas and Immigration in–country customers, contact centres provide information about the Immigration Rules and the Points Based System requirements via a number of published customer enquiry line numbers. In 2014, in line with Cabinet Office guidance, UKVI changed all 0845 and 0870 prefix helpline numbers to lower call tariff rate 0300 prefix numbers. UKVI do not generate any income from these non-geographic numbers enquiry lines.

UKVI have self selection pages on the Gov.uk website (see link below), and informative telephony messages on our help lines to further ensure and assist customers wanting to contact UKVI. This initial triaging activity on our website allows customers to identify the correct point of contact within our business regarding their in country or overseas application enquiry.

https://www.gov.uk/contact-ukvi-inside-outside-uk

Reticulating Splines