Recommendation 8

The Home Office is responsible for processing the visas of those applying to be part of the scheme. By January 2024 the Home Office had received 219,800 visa applications and issued 178,600 visas to people.11 The NAO found that at the start of the scheme, the Home Office had not set out target turnaround times for processing visas, as it simply wanted to process them as quickly as possible. In March 2022, the first month that applications were open, of the 26,000 applications received, just 18% were processed within five working days and 21% took more than 15 working days.12