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Heading to New Zealand from the UK? Why a $90 million visa shortfall could push fees up again

News · 2026-09-04 · 4 min read

If New Zealand is on your list and you are budgeting the move from the UK, there is a cost on the horizon that has nothing to do with you. Immigration New Zealand (INZ) is running a $90 million shortfall in its visa accounts this year, and a fresh fee review is planned before the end of 2026, barely two years after the last one. Migrants and the employers who sponsor them are likely to be the ones asked to fill the hole.

Where the $90 million gap comes from

Two things sit behind it. One is the running cost of Our Future Services, a $336 million automation programme still in its early years. The other is the Biometric Capability Update (BCU), a system meant to modernise how INZ handles biometric data. It ran for seven years, from 2018 to late 2025, and was abandoned without delivering anything usable.

A cancelled system with a growing bill

The 2026 Budget recorded a $31.2 million write-off for the BCU. That did not last long. In July 2026, the head of the ministry responsible, MBIE, disclosed another $6 million of costs linked to the project and could not say that was everything. By early September 2026, known losses were put at close to $40 million, with MBIE still unable to say the total was final.

More could follow. INZ may owe the contractor up to $12 million, on top of the contractor's own claimed losses of at least $4 million and possible penalties of up to $750,000 per month over a 2025 delivery date that was missed. An inquiry is under way.

How the project went wrong

An independent review found the project started in 2018 without proper analysis, skipped due diligence when it was rescoped in 2020, put governance in place too late and let problems grow outside normal reporting. Questions have also been raised over whether costs were arranged to stay below the $35 million level that would have sent the project to Cabinet. A project update on March 19, 2024 called it sound and on track; nine days later, an independent quality check concluded it probably could not be delivered at all.

The replacement is already under strain

Our Future Services is an eight-year programme and only about a year and a half old. A review found its business case overstated savings. It relied on cutting 118 full-time roles and trimming IT, property and corporate overheads that mostly do not shrink with staff numbers. The promised 30% productivity gain has not appeared: student visa processing is running just 7–20% above baseline. Treasury now rates the programme high risk.

Why users end up paying

After the 2024 overhaul of fees and levies, INZ became funded almost entirely by the people using it. In 2024/25 its income was roughly:

That works out at about 91 cents in every dollar coming from migrants and their sponsors. The 2024 changes were already steep: skilled residence visa fees went from $4,290 to $6,450, and student visa fees doubled to $750. INZ's own Cabinet paper that year forecast ICT spending rising from $13.3 million in 2024/25 to $58.2 million by 2027/28, a fourfold increase driven largely by the old systems the BCU was meant to replace.

MBIE has said getting the visa account back into surplus will need spending cuts and revenue recovery measures. Put simply, fees are likely to rise again.

Planning your move with that in mind

The user-pays approach was a deliberate choice, but this deficit comes from a failed project and an optimistic business case rather than policy. For you, the practical points are:

• Treat today's visa charges as a minimum when you budget, not a fixed figure.
• If you are thinking about residence through the skilled route, the 2024 jump shows how much charges can move between reviews.
• Check the current fee for your visa on Immigration New Zealand's visa pages just before you apply.

If fees in Australia are part of your thinking too, our look at what the Australian visa fee rise means for your budget covers the other side of the Tasman, and our jobs page lists roles open to UK applicants in both countries.

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