Forward From the Director of UK visas

UK visas is the overseas arm of Britain’s integrated border management. We have visa offices in 160 locations throughout the world. The largest handles 150,000 applications a year; the smallest less than 10. We issue visas to 80% of those who apply, and stop only those who are a significant immigration risk to the UK. We process over 90% of straightforward applications within 24 hours. This is a record of which we are proud, but we aim to do even better.

Our new Mission Statement explains how UK visas will deliver the broader objectives set by our parent departments, the Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to achieve a balance between managing travel and migration and preventing illegal immigration.

Our goals are:

• to bring communities together
• to improve Britain’s competitiveness as a destination for travel,trade, migration and investment
• to prevent immigration abuse
• to deliver value for money
• to earn public confidence

We have already introduced new initiatives such as working with commercial partners to enable us to handle sharply increasing demand while also improving customer service. We are reviewing the whole customer visa experience as we introduce new measures to ensure that we achieve our goals of supporting community cohesion and improving the UK’s competitiveness as a destination. We are also working on better ways of deterring fraudulent applications which are a major problem in some countries. Biometric visas, to be rolled out world-wide over the next 18 months, will make a big difference. We will also work with other governments and their law enforcement authorities too.