Privacy Policy

The Home Office reserves the right to gather information relating to site usage. Any information gathered is primarily for internal use to allow us to refine and improve our customer service. Where information will be disclosed to a third party, we will, where possible, ensure that this is clearly indicated. This does not affect your statutory rights.

Payments made through the site are handled by RBS WorldPay, who receive a reference number unique to your application from the UK Border Agency.

In addition, this site uses an online measuring package called SiteStat which uses cookies to identify repeat visits. Our site is also carrying banner advertising for government services which use cookies in order to avoid you seeing the same advertisements repeated over and over, and to allow us to gauge the number of people viewing a campaign or particular web page.

Cookies are pieces of data created when you visit a site, and contain a unique, anonymous number. They are stored in the cookie directory of your hard drive, and do not expire at the end of your session. Cookies used by the Home Office contain no personal information about the user, nor does our website elicit or store any information from users other than the Internet Protocol address of the computer used to access the site. Cookies on this site may safely be turned off by users without affecting how pages are displayed.