Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent estimate her Department has made of the number of applicants who are unable to book a free biometric residence permit enrolment appointment; and what plans her Department has to increase the provision of those appointments.

UK Visa and Citizenship Application Service (UKVCAS) centres are run by Sopra Steria Ltd (SSL) on behalf of UK Visas & Immigration (UKVI).

The Home Office produces intake forecasts for immigration applications which are used to inform business and appointment capacity planning with SSL; forecasts vary across the year and our service is designed to respond and meet fluctuating demand. As part of UKVI’s ongoing operational forecasting activities we regularly review and refresh the number of applications we expect from all routes which in turn inform UKVCAS capacity planning.

Demand for appointments to enrol biometrics at a UKVCAS service point is not wholly predictable and is dependent on customer behaviour. All chargeable appointments are optional. Estimates of how many customers are unable to book a free appointment is not possible; many of our customers choose to book chargeable appointments for reasons of convenience, cost and time benefits which enhanced service points or out of hours appointments provide alongside additional services they are able to access within a chargeable appointment, such as document checking and scanning, which are not included with free appointments.

UKVCAS appointment levels have now returned to above the levels they were in March 2020, prior to COVID-19 disruption. Although UKVCAS are still currently experiencing very high demand for all appointments and the ongoing impact of measures to maintain COVID-secure facilities is limiting the ability to quickly expand capacity. Nevertheless, appointment capacity, including free appointment capacity will continue to increase over the coming months.

Work is ongoing with SSL not only to ensure enough free appointments are available, but also to ensure family groups have access to them, and access is fairly balanced across the four nations. SSL have successfully recently trialled the introduction of group booking slots at some of the core service points, including Cardiff which is the closest core site to Bristol, and are now in the process of increasing the number of group slots at other sites.