Stephen Timms – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stephen Timms on 2016-02-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what financial savings she expects to result from the transfer of processing Bangladeshi visa applications to New Delhi.

James Brokenshire

Decision making on UK visa applications lodged in Bangladesh was transferred from Dhaka to New Delhi in September 2014. Logistical changes like this are made for operational reasons and to refine the longstanding hub and spoke structure of the visa network, where applications are decided at regional decision making centres. The hub and spoke structure increases resilience, improves security and enhances decision quality. The overall customer experience is unchanged as applications can be submitted at the same visa application centres and continue to be decided within the same global customer service standard. As result of this transfer of work we also estimate a saving of around £0.6m per year.