It seems that the cutoff of Sept is not dependant on the number of applicants/available RCoS, but on the return of unused RCoS.
I found two pieces of news from two separate law firms.
https://www.kingsleynapley.co.uk/news-a ... on-process
"The Home Office also intends to make one further change relating to the limit. Under the existing rules, RCoS must be assigned by Sponsors within three months or they will expire. The change will enable the Home Office to return any such unused places to the limit, increasing the number of RCoS available.
The Home Office did this informally for the August allocation by writing to Sponsors to request the return of unused certificates, which accounted for an additional 648 certificates. This enabled those applicants earning a salary of £24,000 or above to qualify for an RCoS from the August allocation. The re-allocation process will now be formalised and any RCoS unallocated after three months will be automatically returned to the pot."
http://www.martindale.com/immigration-l ... 215026.htm
"Under the existing rules, an RCoS must be assigned by the sponsoring employer within three months of the date of issue or it will expire. A proposed change would allow the Home Office to return unused places to the limit, which would increase the number of RCoS available. More information on this will be available in the Immigration Rules and the related Sponsor Guidance.
Lastly, following the introduction of the new salary bands table, the Home Office will need to make changes to its internal systems, which may cause application processing delays in November (applications can be made for this period on or after October 6, 2015). This will not affect the number of RCoS available in either the October or November allocations."
If the above info is accurate, then we know two things:
1. The system can't be more stupid by not allowing unused RCoS to automatically return to the pool. It disobeys the Tier 2 guidance and attributes to the June/July disaster. The home office will change the system in Novemeber.
2. We don't know how many unused RCoS are left after 648 being returned. We need to know whether all the employers responded before 11 Aug, and whether the RCoS granted in June were included in last month's return request as the RCoS granted in June expired on 12 Aug(or at least 11 Aug), one day after the allocation meeting.
Furthermore, the latest immigration statistics of entry clearance Tier 2 general visa applications just came out. There are only 4254 and 3868 visa applications in Q1 and Q2 2015. But the RCoS granted in the same period are 5750 and 5431. Having taken into consideration of Tier 4 dependant and Croatians, there are still 1000+ mismatch each quarter. I know not all the visa applications are made during the same period, so I assume all the RCoS are used in the next month. Based on that I found the number of the RCoS granted is 6054 in Dec 2014-Feb 2015, and 5765 in Mar 2015-May 2015. The gap is even larger! I know technically a RCoS can be assigned at the end of three months, and then used in the visa application in another three months, but I assume there are only very few such cases!
I wonder whether all those RCoS were wasted due to the inefficiency of the management system. Please share your opinion. Thanks!