Overseas personnel serving in the British armed forces will be able to apply to stay in the UK without paying a £2,389 application fee.

The visa fee will be scrapped for personnel who have completed six years in the forces or been discharged due to an illness or injury sustained during their service.

The waiver, agreed by Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and Home Secretary Priti Patel, will also apply to eligible veterans.

The new policy will come into effect in the spring and could help some of the 9,000 non-UK citizens currently serving in the armed forces if they want to apply for indefinite leave to remain in the UK after their service ends.

Mr Wallace said: “It is only right that we have taken this important step to express our sincere gratitude to the brave men and women from outside of the UK who have made such a valuable contribution to the defence of this country.”

Ms Patel said: “There are thousands of brave men and women across the Commonwealth who have served our country with distinction in the military over the years.

“Waiving the visa fee for those Commonwealth veterans and Gurkhas with six years’ service who want to settle here is a suitable way of acknowledging their personal contribution and service to our nation.”

But the waiver will not cover the families of overseas personnel, with Mr Wallace arguing that if a British national serving in the military had a foreign partner they would have to pay the fee.

Mr Wallace said: “It would be fundamentally unfair to pay for the families of Commonwealth soldiers but not the families of British soldiers… If you are a young Guardsman from Preston and you marry a girl from Singapore, it has never been the case that the armed forces pay for the new wife to come and settle.”