Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of the extent to which UK Visa and Immigration claims are processed to the same standard of service as they were before the covid-19 outbreak; and what steps she has taken to help ensure her Department reaches those standards.

UKVI has faced extremely high pressures over the past two years. All visa routes have seen extremely high demand following the end of the pandemic and the easing of travel restrictions. The Home Office also prioritised capacity earlier this year to help people forced to flee their homes, as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, get to safety through our Ukraine visa schemes.

UKVI has been working hard to reduce processing times and is now back within service standard across a number of our visa routes. We have updated our guidance on expected waiting times so that customers have a realistic indication of how long their applications will take to be processed. We encourage customers to continue to refer to these updates as our processing times change on a regular basis.