BCA blind spot as admin review backlog reaches six months

Administrative review is the formal process of asking the UK Home Office to reconsider a visa refusal decision if an immigration caseworker is believed to have made a factual or procedural error.

Under UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) rules, visa applicants with live, ongoing administrative review cases against a refusal are not included when calculating a sponsor’s Basic Compliance Assessment (BCA) refusal rate. UKVI excludes these individuals because the initial decision is actively being challenged and has not been definitively upheld.

The PIE News understands that it is common practice for universities to request students to challenge their visa decision via administrative review in order to be eligible to claim a full or partial deposit refund or a new CAS number for a future intake.

This factor, combined with soaring visa rejections on credibility grounds, has led to a reported rise in administrative review cases – with the current backlog extending to six months for a decision, rather than the 28 days stated in the current policy.

The latest government data showed an increase of 56% in total rejections compared to the same quarter (Q1) last year.

This has created a growing blind spot in the measurement of visa rejection decisions for BCA ratings, with an apparent advantage for institutions that are required to submit their compliance data at a time when administrative review cases are at their peak.

Calculations: visa refusal rate

2.18 We will assess your refusal rate for the 12 month period immediately before you apply, using CAS data from the SMS. We will take into account all CAS that students have used and applications we refused during this 12 month period.

2.17 Students with live administrative reviews against a decision to refuse their Student or Child Student application will not be includedStudent sponsor guidance

As some institutions operate autumn, winter, spring and summer intakes, a six-month decision timeline means there will inevitably be favourable overlaps with the submission dates for BCA data by institution. BCA submissions are due in the corresponding month to when an institution was first granted their sponsor licence.

In practice, the more visa rejections that end up in administrative review, the longer the processing times will become, and the more rejections may be excluded from a timely BCA data submission for certain institutions.

Students applying from outside the UK can only apply for administrative review within 28 days of receiving a refusal decision, while students applying from within the UK only have a 14-day window. The appeal costs £80, although the fee is refunded if the outcome overturns the refusal.

As administrative reviews are managed by a different department within the Home Office than student visa issuance and sponsor licence auditing, stakeholders fear that the process will become overwhelmed with cases and detached from the unintended impact on BCA metrics.

The number of students in administrative review could yet prove to be a pivotal factor in determining the red, amber or green thresholds for visa rejections, with fine margins potentially impacting the overall rating a university receives.

As previously reported in The PIE, the RAG rating thresholds are narrower than initially expected with punitive sanctions proposed for visa rejection rates as low as 4%. Universities are monitoring the BCA process closely while they consider a potential judicial review or future litigation over damage to reputation or loss of earnings when the ratings are made public.