Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 25 October 2021 to Question 58819 on Migrant Workers: Home Office, how many visas have been issued to foreign nationals arriving for work in UK territorial waters under the terms of the concession as of 15 November 2021.

Answered by Kevin Foster

Home Office Migration Statistics do not publish the number of seafarers who have been granted leave to enter the UK to join vessels working in UK territorial waters under the Offshore wind workers Immigration Rules concession.

To capture numbers would require a manual trawl of data and to do so would incur disproportionate cost.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 25 October 2021 to Question 58819 on Migrant Workers: Home Office, what UK Visas and Immigration’s annual (a) costs and (b) staff hours are from (i) administering and (ii) reviewing the concession from 2017 to the latest year for which figures are available.

Answered by Kevin Foster

The Home Office does not collect or store the data on the number of overseas nationals working in the offshore industry in the UK from 2017 to date.

We do not collect information on employers using the concession. The Government has no plans to publish information on individual companies which is consistent with the wider immigration system.

The Home Office is unable to report on the cost or staff hours spent in relation to the concession. To obtain this information would require detailed reporting against many Home Office units and could only be obtained at disproportionate costs.

The Government regularly reviews the existence of concessions against the general principles of the immigration system to check whether they are necessary and regularly undertakes engagement with a wide range of stakeholders. This will continue to be the case in future.

The information about the concession is published online at:

Offshore wind workers Immigration Rules concession 2017: July 2021 update - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 25 October 2021 to Question 58819 on Migrant Workers: Home Office, how many letters have UK Visas and Immigration received from employers under the terms of the concession as of 15 November 2021.

Answered by Kevin Foster

The Home Office does not collect or store the data on the number of overseas nationals working in the offshore industry in the UK from 2017 to date.

We do not collect information on employers using the concession. The Government has no plans to publish information on individual companies which is consistent with the wider immigration system.

The Home Office is unable to report on the cost or staff hours spent in relation to the concession. To obtain this information would require detailed reporting against many Home Office units and could only be obtained at disproportionate costs.

The Government regularly reviews the existence of concessions against the general principles of the immigration system to check whether they are necessary and regularly undertakes engagement with a wide range of stakeholders. This will continue to be the case in future.

The information about the concession is published online at:

Offshore wind workers Immigration Rules concession 2017: July 2021 update - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 25 October 2021 to Question 58819 on Migrant Workers: Home Office, what steps her Department is taking to assess whether firms involved in the construction or maintenance of wind farms within territorial waters have measures in place to regularise the position of their workers, in line with the terms of the concession; and what criteria UK Visas and Immigration use as part of that assessment.

Answered by Kevin Foster

The Home Office does not collect or store the data on the number of overseas nationals working in the offshore industry in the UK from 2017 to date.

We do not collect information on employers using the concession. The Government has no plans to publish information on individual companies which is consistent with the wider immigration system.

The Home Office is unable to report on the cost or staff hours spent in relation to the concession. To obtain this information would require detailed reporting against many Home Office units and could only be obtained at disproportionate costs.

The Government regularly reviews the existence of concessions against the general principles of the immigration system to check whether they are necessary and regularly undertakes engagement with a wide range of stakeholders. This will continue to be the case in future.

The information about the concession is published online at:

Offshore wind workers Immigration Rules concession 2017: July 2021 update - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many employers have utilised the Offshore wind workers Immigration Rules concession 2017 to date.

Answered by Kevin Foster

We do not collect information on employers using the concession. The Government has no plans to publish information on individual companies which is consistent with the wider immigration system.

The information about the concession is published online at:

Offshore wind workers Immigration Rules concession 2017: July 2021 update - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

Found: utilise the rou te, employers must obtain a sponsor licence that allows them to issue CoS to prospective migrant

Found: utilise the rou te, employers must obtain a sponsor licence that allows them to issue CoS to prospective migrant