Lord West of Spithead (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Security and Counter-terrorism), Home Office; Labour)

Appointments in the United Kingdom are currently available within our agreed standard of 15 days for applicants who are prepared to attend at any of our sites. The average waiting time for a premium single appointment is eight days, based on a range of seven to 10 days between regional offices across the country. In the case of postal applications, the average waiting time for a single appointment is eight days, based on a range of two—28 days across the offices. A walk-in service for those with an urgent need to travel is available from the UK Border Agency office in Croydon.

Information on waiting times for students overseas applying for visas is not available because the UK Border Agency is unable to distinguish appointment times by type of visa. I am able to give figures for all appointments—of our 328 application points around the world, 110 allow walk-in appointments and there is no waiting period. These sites handle approximately 60 to 70 per cent of all applications. Of the 218 sites that require appointments, only 10 per cent currently report average waiting times from inquiry to the next available appointment, which is 1.08 days.