To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to increase the number of biometric appointments available this week in visa application centres in (a) Poland, (b) Romania and (c) Moldova for Ukrainians seeking refuge in the UK.
Answered on
21 March 2022
The Home Office has surged capacity to other countries including Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic and Moldova, including a new pop-up VAC in Rzeszow, Poland.
The Home Office is deploying more staff to the region this week to support customer queries and bring on board further capacity to facilitate more biometric appointments across the next week.
Since Tuesday 15 March, Ukrainians with passports no longer need to go to a Visa Application Centre to give their biometrics before they come to the UK.
This will mean VACs across Europe can focus their efforts on helping Ukrainians without passports. We have increased the capacity at those Centres to 13,000 appointments per week.
The Home Secretary’s statement of 10 March sets out the latest update for the Ukrainian Family Scheme. It can be found on the GOV.UK website: Home Secretary update on support for Ukrainians - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)