UK visa applicants should be aware now that it may take a long time for the visa processing team to make a decision on their visa application, which will further extend the waiting periods.
Given the backlog of visa applications created due to Ukraine’s visa schemes, the Home Office currently takes double the normal time to issue visas, VisaGuide.World reports.
In this regard, the government is prioritizing processing applications submitted under the Ukrainian visa schemes. Meanwhile, the department has been forced to suspend priority services amid delays.
As for the issue, Home Secretary Priti Patel admitted she could not give a date when visa processing times could return to normal.
In May this year, the Labor Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, Dame Diana Johnson, wrote to Patel to ask when she expected the time limit to return to the 60-day time frame.
In a letter sent to Diana Johnson, Patel wrote: “Our planning team has been fully committed to Ukraine reporting since the beginning of the invasion. Therefore, it has not yet been possible to fully model our recovery until the impacts of that support have ended and recovery prioritization, particularly over the summer, has been confirmed. We will keep this under review”.
As of February 2022, more than 37,000 asylum seekers, including 12,000 Afghan refugees, were accommodated in UK hotels for £4.7 million per day.
According to the latest data from the Home Office, about 175,100 applications from Ukrainians have been received for visas under the Ukraine Scheme. Such data also revealed that under the family scheme, there have been issued 51,900 visas.
Meanwhile, the total number of Ukrainian scheme visas issued to people number about 148,300 visas. The same source has shown that the total arrivals of Ukraine Scheme visa holders in the UK are 91,000.
Total applications received and visas issued include approximately 100 visas to Ukrainian family members under Ukrainian Fee Waiver Family Concession, which began on February 14, 2022. In addition, in early July 2022, 800 rejections have been made to third-country nationals who have applied for a visa under the Ukrainian Schemes but do not qualify.
Moreover, the number of applications ending on July 5, 2022, was 21,000. According to the Home Office, this involved applications at different stages of the case review process and varying levels of complexity.
In April, refugee minister Lord Richard Harrington said the government aimed to increase processing to 15,000 visas a week, adding that with more than 200,000 members of the British public registered to host Ukrainian refugees, the Home Office remained well short of the target.
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