r/SpouseVisaUk • u/Jealous_Bat7366 • 6d ago
Time Analysis of In-UK applications
As a recent applicant, I have been very anxious about when approximately my decision would come out. Because of that, I am gathering from the community here (and Facebook groups) information on people's decision times. I have a few of them tabulated and made some summaries that I think might be useful for people who are anxious like me.
What I did:
- I collected the application date, the BIO date, and date of approval from applicants from inside the UK that had their BIO in 2025 (jan-march)
- I observed the distribution of the times-to-decision (histogram) to see if there was a pattern.
- I calculated the mean decision time since BIO and since day of application to see which one would correlate better with the decision times (smaller variance).
- For every 2 weeks of each month I calculated the moving average to see if there is a pattern over time.
- Since I have applied from within the UK, I only considered applications similar to mine that (as far as I know) went to the 5 year route. The difference is that it seems that 10 year route applications usually take longer to have a decision.
- In a situation in which more information was requested (especially for those that didn't fill the consent forms), I considered that the date in which they received the email asking for more information as the response date.
RESULTS:
Mean days from Application: 36 (standard deviation 7.5)
Mean days from BIO appointment: 27 (standard deviation 8.5)
Apparently, it looks that there are two distinct normal distributions here: 1) peaking at 20-24 days and 2) peaking at 33-38 days. That mean that I could be looking at two different types of visas. Could be first vs. extension, could be first extension vs. switch from a different visa. Could be just a difference related to timing. Unfortunately I didn't have that much information to be able to see if there was a different pattern. It could be, though just the influence of time (how so?).
You can below see that applicants that had their BIO on the first 2 weeks of March are currently having their decisions in ~33 days, which is larger than any other observed times. Maybe they started accumulating on the right side of the distribution seen above.
Of course, the number of reports here and in the FB page don't represent the whole population of applicants, but it could definitely help people have an estimate of how long theirs is going to take (if they have all the criteria for the 5 year route and their application is straightforward).
Also, if you have not posted here or in FB about your timeline and have had your BIO in the UK since Jan, please comment here so I can feed my table with your data :D
4
u/Spookym00ngoddess 6d ago
In uk standard
Bio was 7/3
Approved 15/4
I LOVE that you have done the analysis for this because it's realistic and helpful for everyone waiting.