How this data is collected
GovWait does one thing: it records the processing times that government agencies themselves publish, and keeps the history they overwrite. Nothing here is estimated, crowd-sourced, or inferred.
Method
- Primary sources only. We read the official pages and data files of the agencies listed below — never third-party summaries.
- Polite, honest collection. Our collector identifies itself with a bot User-Agent, obeys every robots.txt, waits at least 3 seconds between requests to the same host, and re-checks each source about once a week. It fetches a handful of small files — comparable to one human visit.
- Values, not content. We extract the published figure (e.g. “31 days”), the agency's own “last updated” date, the URL, and our retrieval timestamp. All page text on this site is written by us.
- History is never edited. When an agency changes a figure, we add a new dated record; old records are kept verbatim. If a value looks wrong, the validation suite blocks publication rather than guessing.
- Absence is data. Where an agency publishes “no processing time available”, we say exactly that, dated.
Sources currently tracked
| Agency | What we read | License/terms |
|---|---|---|
| UK Visas and Immigration (Home Office) | UK visa processing times (inside UK) | Open Government Licence v3.0 — reuse permitted with attribution. |
| HM Passport Office | UK passport processing time (HM Passport Office service statement) | Open Government Licence v3.0 — reuse permitted with attribution. |
| UK Visas and Immigration (Home Office) | UK visa processing times (outside UK) | Open Government Licence v3.0 — reuse permitted with attribution. |
| Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada | IRCC processing times (non-country categories) | Government of Canada publication; extracted values with attribution (see ircc-ptime). |
| Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada / Service Canada | Canadian passport processing times | Government of Canada publication; extracted values with attribution (see ircc-ptime). |
| Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada | IRCC Check Processing Times data | Government of Canada publication; facts/values extracted under fair-dealing-style factual reuse. Non-commercial reproduction terms noted; we store extracted values with attribution, not page content. Owner review recommended before commercial launch. |
Dataset generated August 22, 2026 · 2,005 routes · 2,005 observations.
What the figures mean — and don't
Published processing times are the agencies' own statistics (typically how long recently completed applications took, or a service standard). They are not a promise about any individual application, and they are not legal advice. For decisions that matter, verify against the linked official source — every page links its source for exactly that reason.
Reuse & attribution
Extracted values are available via our JSON API and MCP server under CC BY 4.0: reuse freely with attribution to GovWait and the originating agency. Underlying figures remain the respective governments' publications (gov.uk material: Open Government Licence v3.0).
Corrections
Spotted a mismatch between a value here and the official page? The official page wins. Email contact@govwait.com so we can investigate.