Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to reduce delays in processing indefinite leave to remain applications for people currently on the 10-year route to settlement.

The Home Office keeps all aspects of the immigration system under regular review, including indefinite leave to remain applications for people currently on the 10-year route to settlement, where applicable. The Home Office regularly reviews its caseworking processes to streamline and increase their efficiency. We can deploy decision-maker capacity flexibly to support wider casework demands across the Home Office. We are exploring options to increase resources in Human Rights and implement technology changes to improve efficiency and speed up processing times.

For applications for indefinite leave to remain, the service standard for straightforward applications is 6 months. Applications for settlement, family and private life visas can be expedited using optional priority or super priority services, where available, for an additional fee to receive a faster decision. Further information can be found here: Get a faster decision on your visa or settlement application: Applying for a faster decision – GOV.UK.

All family and private life visa applications are carefully considered in line with the published processing times available here: Visa processing times: applications inside the UK - GOV.UK. Where applicants require their application to be expedited owing to their individual compelling and compassionate circumstances, we will consider each case on its own merits.

The latest data on settlement applications was published on 21 May 2026 and is to the year ending 31 March 2026 - Immigration system statistics, year ending March 2026 - GOV.UK.

The Home Office publishes data on performance against service standards in its quarterly immigration system statistics, available at Migration transparency data - GOV.UK. Data on performance against the settlement service standard is currently unavailable due to ongoing data quality issues. Generally, the Home Office allocates resources to ensure there are sufficient resources in place to decide the forecast number of applications within the published service standard.