Firstly, let me express my sincere thanks for all valuable posts and suggestions related to Tier-1 extensions. I read most of the Tier-1 extension queries and successful stories since December.
My present Leave to remain expires in 16th March and I were checking for PEO appointment since November'11. Luckily got an appointment in Croydon on January 31st 0945 hours GMT.
I'm working as an IT Contractor through my Limited Company (Director and 50% Shareholder).
As I were planning to apply for extension in January, either postal or PEO, I've collected below documents well in advance and taken to PEO along with photocopies.
01) Accountant letter briefing my Income and Salary details for the period 01-01-2011 to 31-12-2011.
02) Personal Current account Bank Statement (28-11-2010 to 27-12-2011 plus a temporary statement from 28-12-2011 to 28-01-2012) : Proof of Income
03) Personal Savings account Bank Statement : Proof of Savings
04) Payslips (November-2010 to December-2011)
05) Dividend Vouchers (November-2010 to December-2011) [These Contain Net dividend, gross dividend and Tax paid details and with a company logo and stamp]
06) Business Bank Statement (From November-2010 to 28-01-2012)
07) Rental Agreement
08) Passports
To be on safer side, I've also taken below documents. But the case worker hasn't asked for these documents.
09) Marriage certificate
10) Council Tax bill, Water Tax bill
11) My wife's Personal Bank statement.
12) My HSMP Approval letter (Though it got expired in 2008)
13) A printout of UKBA Tier-1 General Points calculator [10 for Age, 35 for Education (Already proven in my Initial application), 45 for Earnings, 5 for UK Experience, 10 for English Language (Already proven in my Initial application) and 10 for Savings]
14) My Company Invoices
Reached to Croydon office at 0900 hours, parked my car in public car parking opposite to the UKBA office (£5 pounds for all day parking). Gotout from Security checking
at 0915 hours and collected the ticket number by 0925 hours. Paid the application fees by 0950 hours. Completed Our Biometric process by 1100 hours.
The case worked has called us around 1130 hours. He has asked for the passport. Then did some basic verifications and then asked the Income proof documents.
He has asked me below questions during the verification process.
01) Are you employed or self-employed? "Employed"
02) Where is your company office? (My home and My accountant office for all communication correspondence)
03) Why there are two addresses for your company? (We've moved to another home in August)
04) How your company recieves income? (IT solutions and services)
05) Why you came an year late from the actual Visa valid date (Family issues [Though my initial Tier-1 visa is valid from March 2009, I came to UK June 2010 because of family issues, Job in India and also recession in UK during that time])
Though it is a straight application, the case verification took more than 2 hours.
Finally the Case worker called us back to the window and informed that the visa extention is approved. And then he returned all the originals, approval letter of extension, Visa amount bill and took the photocopies of the documents provided as proof.
Today we've recieved our Biom cards and the Visa is valid till 16-03-2014. (Some of my friends told me that it will be issued from the date of PEO appointment, I might be lucky or the process might have changed
)Hope this helps for your extension applications. All the best.
Cheers