LONDON – The authorities in the United Kingdom have announced a raise in the fee for student visas and visit visas to be made effective from next month.
The fee for applying for a study visa from outside the UK is set to increase by 127 GBP from October 4. According to the UK Home Office, the fee for applying for a student visa would be 490 GBP to match the amount charged for in-country applications.
The Home Office said the fee will increase from October 4 subject to Parliamentary approval, raising concerns amongst the aspiring students.
The government has also announced to increase the visit visa fee and as per the details available, a UK Visit Visa fee for under six months will be increased by 15 GBP; the fee will be £115 from next month.
‘Today’s changes do not include the planned increase to the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS) which are scheduled to be introduced later in the Autumn,’ the government said.
The announcement comes months after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that the fees and health surcharge paid towards the UK’s state-funded National Health Service (NHS) by visa applicants are set to rise “significantly” to match the country’s public sector wage increase.
The British premier has been under immense pressure following an independent review of pay for different professionals. The premier had confirmed in July a hike between 5 and 7 per cent across the board but to bridge the gap, stressing that additional funding would not be met with higher government borrowing and the burden would have to be shifted somewhere else.
“If we’re going to prioritise paying public sector workers more, that money has to come from somewhere else because I’m not prepared to put up people’s taxes and I don’t think it would be responsible or right to borrow more because that would just make inflation worse,” Sunak told reporters at a Downing Street press conference.
“So, what we have done are two things to find this money. The first is, we are going to increase the charges that we have for migrants who are coming to this country when they apply for visas and indeed something called the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS), which is the levy that they pay to access the NHS,” he said.
“All of those fees are going to go up and that will raise over GBP 1 billion, so across the board visa application fees are going to go up significantly and similarly for the IHS,” he added.
Sunak justified the increase and said this was “entirely right” as these fees have not been increased recently. He opined that the government believes it is appropriate given that the costs have risen since the last hike.
The move comes amid demands by junior doctors in England who started a five-day strike on Thursday after their demands for a 35 per cent pay hike were rejected.
