Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of standard visitor visa applications were refused in the (a) most recent 12-month period for which data is available and (b) equivalent 12-month period the year before.

The Home Office publishes data on entry clearance visas by visa type, including Visitor visas, in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on the outcomes of visa applications are published in table ‘Vis_D02’ of the detailed entry clearance visas dataset. This does not include a breakdown of reason for refusal and will include a small proportion of non-‘Standard’ Visitor visas (for example, ‘Marriage Visitors’). Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. The latest data is from January 2005 up to the end of June 2026.

To calculate the refusal rate, we recommend taking the proportion of decisions (grants and refusals) which resulted in a visa refused.

Information on future Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the ‘Research and statistics calendar’.