§ Mrs. DunwoodyTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps he is taking to shorten the time taken to deal with applications for British citizenship; and what is the current average time taken to process applications.
§ Mr. RentonThe average time taken to process applications completed during June 1989 was 18 months for registrations and 23 months for naturalisations.
Despite the provision of a considerable number of additional staff to process citizenship applications, the 188W number of applications received at the end of 1987 was so great that there is no prospect of average processing times being reduced in the immediate future. However, we expect there to be an improvement during 1990–91 when the backlog of registrations has been cleared.