More than 1,100 waiting for population permits
A BACKLOG with population permit applications is being dealt with, the States has said, as it confirmed it has been dealing with more than 1,100 applications.
The Population Management Office said it had 900 applications, made under the former Housing Control Law, still to process as well as a more than 200 made under the new population management law.
Transitioning from the former housing licence system to dealing with applications under the new law had resulted in longer turnaround times than expected in the short term.
However, the backlog was not abnormal compared to waiting times under the previous regime.
'This is a time of the year when, under the former Housing Control Law, we would usually expect to have a high volume of live applications in progress,' said Esther Ingrouille, administrator of population management.
'Right now, we have approximately 900 applications that were made under the old system and many of the 200 plus applications made under the Population Management Law cover periods of time before that law was in force.
'This means that there is on-going "transitional" work for the team here to manage, and this adds to the complexity of processing these particular applications.
'The team continues to work really hard to process applications, but it is going to take a little time, perhaps a month or more, for us to get up to date with processing. When we do, we expect that our application turnaround times will be significantly quicker than they have been in the past.'
It had also received high numbers of enquirers about the new law and she asked those waiting for applications to be patient.
