citizenship ceremony at different place

[raikal]

Hi,
I live in surrey and my council is always busy with citizenship ceremonies. Usually people are not getting one for at least 45 days. as they only do 30 at a time in a month.
I am in the process of applying next week and thinking to mention a different council. Is that ok ? Has any one applied to a different council than they live ?

Regards

[ppron747]

I think we've all seen that the Home Office are dealing with many applications commendably quickly at the moment, with a number of decisions beng taken within days or weeks, when it's not so long ago that naturalisation applications were taking a couple of years, or even more.

But anything that makes an application non-routine is going to take it out of the "assembly line" process, and when that happens there is potential for delay.

I might be worrying unnecessarily, but I suspect that while asking to have your ceremony elsewhere might have the desired effect, it could also result in your application taking longer then the norm to get through the consideration process. So you might end up in a worse position than if you had simply let things take their course.

I don't think I'd risk it, in your place...

paul

[raikal]

Thanks for the input paul.

But in the application it looks like a straight forward question to chose in another council.

I live in Croydon and at the moment it is 6 weeks waiting list. Nearby bromley has 2 weeks.

Just curious to know if anyone has done this before and approved in usual time.

Regards

[Joseph]

I wouldn't worry about designating a different council. But, you should check with the council beforehand to make sure that their backlog and frequency of ceremonies is better than your council.
A good place to start would be the councils that are also NCS centres. When I visited them, it seemed to me that the Haringey Council had frequent ceremonies (once a week).

Joseph

[John]

In this context, anyone within reasonable distance of Birmingham might like to note that the Council here do ceremonies on two days per month, with a minimum of two separate ceremonies of each of those days, with scope to go up to a maximum of four ceremonies per day.

In other words, here the delays are minimal.

[raikal]

Thanks for your inputs.

I would check with other councils before applying. But do you think it might delay the application as paul commented.

Raikal

[Joseph]

I personally don't think it would delay the application. Since it would speed up the ceremony, I think it's worth trying, but that's just my guess.
Joseph

[raikal]

Hi Josehph,

I have called the Nationality help line and asked the same question. What she said is,
"There should be valid reason to give a different council e.g., moving house etc" then I said about the waiting time her response was "Send a covering letter to explain the same"
It looks complex ...so I am avoiding the same and using the same council where I live.

Raikal

[Joseph]

Thanks for the feedback. The instructions say nothing about cover letters, but you have heard it from them directly, so it must be true.
Joseph

[Rogerio]

I am sure you must have thought about this before... but here it goes: my council (Richmond Upon Thames) would only offer a cerimony in 40 days' from my approval letter last year.

I then opted for an individual cerimony and they were able to set up it the following week. £50 set back though. Maybe you could check with them if they would offer a private cerimony any time soon. R.