Citizenship applications backlog

bbdivo · Post by **bbdivo** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 5:29 pm

Well it was bound to happen, and was expected by many on this board:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4706862.stm

I hope they catch up as quickly as possible!

Post by **John** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 6:02 pm

I am not sure that BBC story gives a good indication. Already this Board has had reports from people who applied after 1st November 2005 that they have received their "application successful" letter.

It remains the case that those applying using NCS ... rather than posting their applications to Liverpool .... seem to hear the result of their application a lot quicker. Accordingly anyone contemplating applying for naturalisation is recommended to use NCS.

rogerroger · Post by **rogerroger** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 6:09 pm

i have a friend who applied through post in october, he is yet to hear from the home office

Post by **John** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 6:22 pm

There are indeed people waiting quite a while but I have two comments. Firstly your own experience .... applying after (or was it on) 1st November .. and you, rogerroger, have already reported you have got your "application successful" letter. So things are clearly not bad for everyone.

Secondly, the current average wait is still a lot less than the historical situation. At the time my wife applied in April 2004 the average was said to be about 8 months. Now it about half of that. OK that might slip a bit because of the October rush of applications, but nevertheless is not doing badly in the circumstances.

You only have to go back three or four years and the average wait was well over a year.

Post by **JAJ** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 6:31 pm

John wrote: Secondly, the current average wait is still a lot less than the historical situation. At the time my wife applied in April 2004 the average was said to be about 8 months. Now it about half of that. OK that might slip a bit because of the October rush of applications, but nevertheless is not doing badly in the circumstances.

The headline is "Thousands in UK Citizenship Queue" which sounds alarmist but in fact, when 120,000 or so applications are granted each year, there are *always* going to be 'thousands' in the queue.

Even with a 4 month processing time, that means a pipeline of about 40,000 applications at any one time.

It probably means the average processing time will move up to 6 months or so in the near future, but then it will drop back as there have likely been fewer applications made in the November-January period.

mhunjn · Post by **mhunjn** » Mon Feb 13, 2006 11:02 am

It's just another example of the media picking up everything and anything to create news... without looking into the details.

A year ago the naturalisation applications were taking 6-8 months in average, but things seem to have improved with the NCS route.

There will always be delays with some applications... for a number of reasons... excess applications, details not filled in correctly, payment methods (cheque instead of card) etc etc.

rogerroger · Post by **rogerroger** » Mon Feb 13, 2006 6:06 pm

You only have to go back three or four years and the average wait was well over a year.

yeah, whom ever i speak to says it took them 12 months, 18 months, 15 months, so i consider myself lucky

mhunjn · Post by **mhunjn** » Mon Feb 13, 2006 6:08 pm

Same here... From personal experience IND have improved things quite a bit compared to last year and years before that.

However, as earlier mentioned, there will always be some delayed applications, bad luck for those who are in that lot.

rogerroger wrote:
You only have to go back three or four years and the average wait was well over a year.
yeah, whom ever i speak to says it took them 12 months, 18 months, 15 months, so i consider myself lucky

confused1 · Post by **confused1** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 3:06 pm

I have applied for Naturalisation at the beginning of October. They debited the fee from my account on the second week of November

.

Then they wrote me back asking for few more supporting documents towards the middle of January

. It was funny because the documents they had asked for were already provided with the application, so, my solicitor wrote them back to consider the documents which were provided earlier

Although just to avoid any confusion I did send them another set of supporting documents

I then spoke to my case worker and she told me I should receive a decision withing the next 4 to 5 weeks. It's almost 3 weeks now..so I need to wait for another 2 weeks......

rogerroger · Post by **rogerroger** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 5:50 pm

dont worry confused1,

your acceptance iwll be in the post soon

confused1 · Post by **confused1** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 7:33 pm

Altough there's a backlog but they're processing them pretty fast. I applied for BC on October and when I phoned them today 21 February... They said the approval letter is on it's way.

I have applied by a solicitor, not through NCS so, the time they have taken to process the application wasn't really bad in my point of view.

rogerroger · Post by **rogerroger** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 9:11 pm

congrats confused1

confused1 · Post by **confused1** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 5:12 pm

rogerroger wrote:congrats confused1

Thanks rogerroger

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Citizenship applications backlog

Citizenship applications backlog