Rose Carey quoted in The Evening Standard on visitor visa applications
According to the Evening Standard, families outside the UK are missing key milestones of their loved ones living in the UK such as weddings and graduation ceremonies, as the Home Office struggles to process visitor visa applications to the three-week standard.
The number of visitor visa applications that take 50 days or more to process has skyrocketed from almost 6,000 to 62,000 in less than four years, Home Office figures obtained by the Standard reveal.
The average wait-time to hear back on a decision is currently six weeks, double the three-week standard. Between January 1 and June 30 this year, 62,779 applications took 50 days or more to process - almost double the 34,762 processed in 50 days or more across the whole of 2021.
Immigration Partner Rose Carey at Charles Russell Speechlys, told the Standard there is a wider problem with visa processing times at the moment.
“The recent introduction and implementation of new IT systems and e documents by the Home Office has caused significant delays.
“Family visas are currently taking up to six months to process and with no priority service available, families are as a result separated for long periods of time.”
Read the full article in The Evening Standard here. Comments also featured on MSN News and Yahoo News!.
