In February 2022, the Home Office decided to suspend priority processing services for Appendix FM (also known as family or spousal visa) entry clearance applications in order to allocate more resources to processing Ukraine Scheme applications.
With the suspension of priority services, processing times for Appendix FM entry clearance applications rose significantly to 24 weeks.
This week, however, the Home Office has announced that priority services for Appendix FM entry clearance applications are being re-instated in a phased manner. Priority services reduce the processing of Appendix FM applications to around 15 working days.
The Home Office will first be offering priority services to customers with existing, undecided applications, ahead of the service resuming for new applications in early 2023.
If you have a pending application, you can expect to be contacted by the Home Office in due course with information about upgrading your application to priority service. There is no set timeframe on when you can expect to be contacted, however, as the Home Office are working through applications on a country-specific and date-order basis.
How Gherson can assist
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The information in this blog is for general information purposes only and does not purport to be comprehensive or to provide legal advice. Whilst every effort is made to ensure the information and law is current as of the date of publication it should be stressed that, due to the passage of time, this does not necessarily reflect the present legal position. Gherson accepts no responsibility for loss which may arise from accessing or reliance on information contained in this blog. For formal advice on the current law please do not hesitate to contact Gherson. Legal advice is only provided pursuant to a written agreement, identified as such, and signed by the client and by or on behalf of Gherson.
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