I know you have been waiting for this ! UKBA announced a consultation on fees and charging last year, and the results are now published !

A total of 78 responses were received ( yes, 78), and guess what ? Yep, despite the fact that 60% of the respondents felt that fees for, for instance, visit visa should be reduced, UKBA have decided that they are actually going up by 3 GBP soon. Is there a purpose to these consultations, or are they done just to satisfy some legal requirement ? Here is the full document :

ImmigrationFeesChargingResponse.pdf

Interesting, thanks for posting Tony.

I think we all accept that they are only playing lip service to whole consultation process.

Not sure if anyone as proof read it, but in Question 4 where they say that 9% gave a certain answer it was 9 people not 9%, I wonder how many more mistakes there are in the response.

I note that, as you point out, they are intending increasing the fee for a short term visa by £3, they say the proposed fee is marginal, and in the big picture it doesn't amount to much, but it's an increase of about 4%, double the current rate of inflation, and set against background of Civil Service pay freezes and further reducing costs by using Locally Engaged Staff.