Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 17 June 2019 to Question 263147 on Visas: Applications, what the new costs of out of hours appointments will be.

We are aware that increased demand has had an impact on short term appointment availability which means customers might not always be able to book an appointment at their earliest convenience.

We are working with Sopra Steria Limited (SSL) as a matter of priority on a number of actions to increase the capacity at service points and we expect availability to increase shortly. These measures include; six additional service points in Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Exeter in May and June. SSL are also increasing appointments offered to customers across a number of existing sites and have reduced the cost of out of hours appointments to £50 in the Croydon service point. Charges in other core sites currently range from £75 to £100, but we will continue to monitor prices and customer demand.