Travelling while your application is in progress is possible

I have a job that requires me to travel several times a month out of the UK. Despite my employer being relatively accomodating to the fact that I couldn't travel for almost 6 weeks I was forced to travel to France for a client meeting last week.

I rang the HO and their best advice was to 'withdraw the application' which is hardly an option as my existing visa has now expired. Thanks a million.

I rang my embassy and it turns out they can issue a 'concurrent' passport for 'urgent business travel' where the 'primary passport was unavailable as part of a visa issuing process'. A concurrent passport is a 2nd passport, it does not replace your primary passport.

Re-entering the UK was a surprising a minor affair, the officer stopped me and spent about 15 minutes checking to see if I had an outstanding visa renewal application. Once he confirmed this my passport was stamped with a 'code 1' stamp which has a validity of 2 months. He said the check and stamp had no impact on the visa process or immigration status.

NB Its your own responsibility to check the legality/implications before travelling overseas. Perhaps others with the knowledge could comment on this message.

BTW In my experience ringing the HO for an update is a total waste of time and I beleive forums such as this do a much better job of keeping people informed of the timelines. Perhaps if we leave the HO alone they will then allocate the excess call centre staff to the case working area

what is your nationality?

Australian

Hi Ed
This is really interesting. I've got to apply for an extension in about three weeks, and I arranged for a concurrent passport so I could keep travelling for work, and I was told that leaving the country and re-entering it during the process would put my application into jeopardy.

I've tried to look everywhere for an alternative, and your post was the first thing I've found. How far in advance did you apply before you travelled? Do you think it matters that you got your concurrent passport after you applied? mine is dated 20 June (I just got it) and there is a section in the application that asks for details of all current passports, and I would expect the morons who process cases would reject an application if I said I have an extra passport which I've kept to use for travelling.

Any further info you have - if any- would be really appreciated.

ta.

This is my exact situtation. I'm tempted to do the same thing but i've been warned that i'll breach the conditions of my visa application.

Can some please provide their experiences?

I am in this same position, my application is pending but need to travel at the end of August, it looks like I will have to rearrange again and whilst employers have been accommodating, it isn't a great position to be in.

I have considered applying for a concurrent passport but thought that this was not allowed under the visa conditions?

Much appreciated if someone could please advise.

Guys I had the same issue, so went for a PEO appointment. Why make your life difficult for a couple of hundred quids????

Tier1immigrant, point taken, and this has nothing to do with the additonal £300 cost.

If you are able to book your PEO appointments in without much effort, then consider yourself very fortunate. I tried to book ANY appointment ANYWHERE between the period from 1 May to 15 June but that proved to be pointless despite logging in 4-6 times a day/night and staying up late almost everynight and logging on from about 11.30 until 12.30pm (even doing this whilst I was travelling in Spain for work for 2 weeks in early May and then a week in late May). I suspect that connection issues from trying to do this whilst overseas didn't help, but it was a frustrating situation to be in. What a wasted effort!

I suppose given the high demand for appointments, I am not surprised. But to add to the frustration, the booking system that is used by UKBA just appears to be useless!! After realising that I was running out of time, I tried to see if I could get an agent to help to ensure that it was done on the day but a few of them were telling me that due to demand they need about 4-6 weeks notice as the process for agents to book appointments is now less straight forward too (the more reasonably prices ones were asking an additional £1K on top of processing fees and their expenses) and the ones that had appointment slots that I could use wanted about £2.5+K plus processing fees and expenses. I personally think that this was just too much to pay for a visa extension that is only going to last 2 years and for which I would then need to fork out another tidy sum.

Honesty, if UKBA stuck to their 75% of decisions within 4 weeks of biometric service standard (which is a service standard they publish and say they aim to meet) then there would genuinely be less angst amongst applicants. If other countries like the US and Australia can get their act together to process visa applications in a reasonable amount of time, why can't the UK system?
Given the near impossibility of getting a PEO appointment anywhere in this country, it was either risk overstaying (and possibly losing my job) or send the application in 6 weeks before visa expiry to buy myself time and hope that they could turn it around in 2 months. The application got sent in and there were no travel plans at the time. But now I am in the position where a project that I work on has become urgent and needs to be dealt with now. This requires travel and my employers are willing to investigate how I can get around the visa renewal stalemate, but unfortunately my HR team are not very clued up and I need to help point them in the right direction.

I have always preferred to do it via PEO regardless of whether I have travel plans or not. Doing it via a PEO is also no longer a guarantee that they can process on that day if they have IT crashes. A friend attended her appointment and they suffered a system crash and her application was taken away and took another 3 weeks to process after the PEO date.

Sorry, about the rant and long post. I am just one of many thousand who are frustrated with the service issues with UKBA that need to be addressed and not just brushed under the carpet.

I did book a PEO appointment. I had to travel to Glasgow from london because it was the only one available. When i got there i realised that i had a copy of a document that i need an original for (I'm applying of ILR, and when i applied for a renewal a couple of years back copies were fine).

There were no appointments free once i had the original so i had to post my application... Massive fail.

The problem is that ILR has a 6 month service standard and as i had expected to get it approved at the PEO i had book work and personal trips.

I asked the same question on another forum and this is the response below

http://www.ukresident.com/forums/topic/ ... 1063492313

Thanks, very useful. Yes, sending in the application in hindsight was a massive faile and naive on my part (although I am only an extension case, so the service standard is much less and thought 2+ months should be fine to get it back in time but UKBA are way behind).

I am also an Australian, so think I have a possible solution. Will have to see if I can get all the paperwork together by the time I need to travel.

Thanks for the tips.

Flossj wrote:Hi Ed
This is really interesting. I've got to apply for an extension in about three weeks, and I arranged for a concurrent passport so I could keep travelling for work, and I was told that leaving the country and re-entering it during the process would put my application into jeopardy.

I've tried to look everywhere for an alternative, and your post was the first thing I've found. How far in advance did you apply before you travelled? Do you think it matters that you got your concurrent passport after you applied? mine is dated 20 June (I just got it) and there is a section in the application that asks for details of all current passports, and I would expect the morons who process cases would reject an application if I said I have an extra passport which I've kept to use for travelling.

Any further info you have - if any- would be really appreciated.

ta.

who told you that?
You guys have to indicate your nationality and then check your embassies websites