Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he has made a recent assessment of the potential impact of (a) system upgrades and (b) maintenance on the time taken to produce biometric residence permits.

The Home Office releases weekly upgrades, including maintenance, to the Atlas caseworking system. Such releases are completed without the Atlas caseworking system, or services like BRP production, being down at all and so there is no impact upon caseworking or BRP production.

Where a maintenance release requires the system to be taken down temporarily, it is done so in quiet periods and for a very short time period, so that caseworking operations are not adversely affected.