The UK Home Office have formally spoken out about families being separated at International borders.

Following reports in the press about family members being separated by borders as they wait for the UK Home Office to decide on a visa application, the Home Office has now formally confirmed that “customers applying for [family visa routes] will experience some delays in the processing of their application.”

In an email sent to legal practitioners representing applications with outstanding applications, the Home Office continued: “we have made the decision to temporarily amend our Marriage and Family service standard to 24 weeks, from our usual service standard for the route of 12 weeks.”

This means those who have submitted visa applications to enter or remain in the UK as a spouse, parent, or dependent relative, will now wait up to six months as standard for a decision where previously they would have waited three.

While the reason for the doubling of the consideration time for family visas centres around the fact that the Home Office is now prioritising resources on those fleeing the conflict in Ukraine (hardly a decision that can be argued against), this may be of scant comfort to those who have submitted an application under one of the family routes.

Is the delay going to be backdated?

While the Home Office’s announcement this week means that a person who is about to submit an application knows from the start they may not receive their visa for six months, it is not yet clear if the same delay will apply to those who already submitted an application.

For those who are approaching the 12 week mark and expecting a decision soon, they may be distressed to find themselves suddenly facing another three month wait.

For a person who is already in the UK and is applying to renew their visa, the decision on the application is less urgent. If you submitted an application to renew your visa in time, then your leave to remain continues unchanged until a decision is made whether that takes three months or six.

If you’re relatively certain of your visa being renewed then the additional delay is unlikely to cause you much concern, although it may interfere with your intended holiday plans.

Trapped abroad

However, those making applications for entry clearance are in a more difficult position.

Many people will have carefully planned the date of submitting their application and made plans to move to the UK shortly after it was granted. This might mean having already sold their home abroad, having given up a job, or having enrolled their child in a new school in the UK following what they reasonably expected to be their arrival date.

What does a person do when they find out that their application will not be granted for six months instead of three?  Some people may have to separate from the rest of their British family members who move to the UK as planned while the visa applicant is left behind. Others may chose to stay together as a family in the country of application and risk all the plans they had already made for their arrival in the UK.

With visa applications already being prohibitively expensive for some, the additional cost – not to mention the added stress – of having to support yourself for an extra three months after submitting your application is a cost that some people might not be able to afford.

Can you push for a faster decision?

Unfortunately, there is very little that can be done if a person finds themselves in this situation and priority services for entry clearance were already stopped some time ago.

Although the Home Office has said it may consider expediting cases on an individual basis, if there are “extremely compassionate or compelling circumstances”, it follows that by noting how high the threshold will be if you want your case to be considered faster.

The reality is that anything less than a serious medical emergency or the death of a close family member in the UK, is unlikely to be enough.

Telling the Home Office that you have been left with nowhere to live or work, or that you are now going to be separated from your partner for six months is not going to have your case put to the top of the queue - and applicants would be advised not to get their hopes up by asking the Home Office to consider their case as a priority.

Should you even try to have your case prioritised?

With most people keen to have their application decided quickly, contacting the Home Office to request that their case be decided more quickly will only leave a person waiting for a decision on that request in addition to a decision on the application. They are unlikely to get the answer they wanted.

Furthermore, the more people that contact the Home Office to ask for their case to be expedited, the more Home Office resources will be used in responding to those requests - with a consequent further delay in cases being considered substantively.

A conflict of human rights?

While no-one can argue that people fleeing a war zone should not be given priority over those who simply want to move to the UK through choice, some might take the view that the Home Office created a rod for its own back by putting in place complex application processes for Ukrainian nationals where so many other countries have made the process significantly more straightforward.

The Home Office control the application process and it is hard to have sympathy for it now having to focus so many resources on the Ukrainian schemes it only recently put in place.

Although Ukrainian nationals seeking to enter or stay in the UK are undeniably making applications which engage their human rights, family visa applications also have a basis in an applicant’s human right to family life - which perhaps makes it an odd decision from the Home Office to have singled out the family visa routes for official delays.

As the delays continue and more applicants face the reality of lengthy separation from partners, parents and children, we can expect increasing numbers of press reports on the impact on families affected.

Whether those reports have any effect on Home Office procedure remains to be seen. If you would like more information concerning the points raised in this blog, please do not hesitate to contact our team.

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