The forum has been great help for me and the discussions, experienced shared by members and information provided had been very helpful to me to prepare for the appointment. I would like to thank all of you who had answered my queries to resolve any issues I had faced.
My case was quiet straight forward. I was on work-permit with one dependent, 5 years with same employer, absences less than 90 days, no absences were more than 30 days and salary was higher than stated in code of practice. Although my job title didn’t match the exact job title, I asked my manager to choose which was closest to my job title and the salary below my current salary. I guess it’s the benefit of working in a small firm.
The documents I submitted are:
1. Passport: Main Applicant & Spouse
2. Application Form: SET (O) Version 04/2012
3. Photo: Main Applicant & Spouse
4. Absence Sheet: Details of Absences (period of Work Permit)
5. Life in the UK Test: Main Applicant & Spouse
6. Employer Letter
7. Pay Slips : 3 Months
8. Letter from employer confirming that the pay-slips and P60s are authentic
9. Bank Account: Main Current Account (3 months) & Saving Account (3 Months)
10. P60: 5 Year
11. Cohabitation Documents: Marriage Certificate , Joint Bank Account I - 2 statement covering different date, Council Tax 2 years - joint name , Joint Bank Account II - 2 statement covering different date, Mortgage Statement - 2 years & Thames Water – recent
12. Letter from Home Office: Approval of Work permit, Visa Issuance Letter, Relocation of Employer - letter to Company, Relocation of Employer - letter to Main Applicant
13. Photocopies of all the documents including passport
I had made two packets - one with application, photos, passports and all original documents and another all the photocopies and arranged in a manner stated above.
On the day. I live in Croydon itself so it was 10 minutes drive from my home. There are two options to park the car, one infront of home office @ whitgift centre (NCP) or behind home-office there is another NCP but its difficult to find if you are coming here for the first time. I parked at whitgift centre because its closer to home-office. My appointment was 9:00am but I reached around 7:45, I thought I will have breakfast and might be allowed to enter around 8:00 but unfortunately they didn’t allow me to enter before 8:00. I asked them whether I can stay in the area ( which looked like waiting room), the security personnel said that we are not allowed to sit there. So we went to Sainsbury’s @ whitgift centre to buy some water and food.
At around 8.30, we went to home office. The security personnel at the door asked us what sort of appointment and the appointment confirmation email which I showed to the gentleman. He asked us to go through the security and follow and went through the security smoothly.
Around @ 8.45 am at the ground floor, there were queue for the counter where the ticket numbers were distributed. As soon as one of the counters was free, we were called. The gentleman (his accent and look was Indian) at the counter asked us our application form, passport and appointment email. Actually I had filled two form - one filled with acrobat typewriter and hand written. I was not sure whether they will accept the form filled using acrobat. We gave the application filled with acrobat and the rest he asked for. The gentleman completely ignored us and started to talk with his colleague and doing nothing (typical government employees). After they finished their conversation, the gentleman started to feed our data into the system, he printed the ticket number and gave us our documents, ticket number and fire exit information about the building. He asked us to go the 2nd floor and make a payment. The whole process took around 15 – 20 minutes.
Around, 9:00 am we were queuing at second floor to make a payment. The lady (accent was like eastern European) at the counter asked for our application form & ticket number and asked us to make the payment. I gave my credit card and she asked us to key in the pin. The payment went smoothly. She returned our document plus payment receipt, asked us to go straight and wait for our number to be called. The process took around 10-15 minutes.
So we went to the waiting room around 9:15am. The waiting room was full of people and lots of noise (felt like train station). The case workers & automated machines were calling the numbers. Sometime it was very hard to understand it because of the noise created by the people & accent of case workers. We were wondering why case worker and automated machine were calling the number. After sometime we realized that case workers were announcing the number for the counter and automated machine for biometric information. Our number was called around 9:40am; the lady (British lady) asked us our application form, passport, ticket, photo and payment receipt. She started to input our data, no single questions have been asked. She returned our document and informed us to wait for our number to be called for biometric information & after that one of the case workers on the same floor will see us. The lady was nice and soft spoken. With her in the counter, there was another lady to whom she was telling what to do and things like that. I felt like she was new staff and she was giving her the training. The whole process took around 15 minutes.
Around 10:20am, our number was announced for the biometric information. I suggest people to have a sit at the far corner – near counter number 1-5 which is the counter for biometric. The number is also displayed on the board. The gentleman (British) at the counter was nice and he told us about the biometric. He asked us our ticket number and passport. He inputted my detail, printed the document and asked me whether the name and add are correct. He asked the question in the document and write yes or no and sign the document after that he took finger prints and pictures. He repeated the same procedure for my wife. The whole procedure took around 10 minutes.
Around 10:50 am the lady at the customer service announced our number. She asked our ticket number, wrote 2nd floor and requested to go to the 2nd where the case worker will see us. We went to the second floor and the waiting room was full. We thought like we might have to wait another half an hour but to my surprise our number was announced within 10 minutes of going to the second floor i.e. 11:00am.
The case worker at the counter asked our application form, ticket, payment receipt, original supporting documents and the photocopies of all the documents submitted. I had a sheet on the top of the documents explaining what documents has been submitted for each category as mentioned above. He flipped our application, checked whether we have signed where necessary, he looked at the page where you have to mention your salary, COP number, annual salary and working hours and the absence. He started to input data into his computer from my new passport, old passport and my wife’s passport. He then checked my employers letter, looked at my pay-slips. He started to look at the bank statement and pay-slip to check whether the amount in the pay-slip and bank are same. To make his job easy, I had marked in the bank statement where the payment from my company was appearing. He asked me whether I collected my P60 last week for the year ending 5 April 2012, I said yes. He smiled. He printed the COP related to my employment and checked it against the employment letter. He had a look at our life in the UK test and informed me how much I had got and my wife. At that time I was not bothered about the marks, we were interested to hear the magic work. After that he didn’t ask any question, In between he used to go away from his desk to print outs and photocopies and asked us to give few minutes. Almost after half an hour he gave us the thumbs up and asked us to give few minutes. He took our passport, did photocopy and printed some document. He came back and said the magic word that he has approved our application. He explained about the biometric card, not to make any arrangement of travel plant until we receive our biometric card and asked us to carry our passport & biometric card when travelling abroad. He gave us the letter , where my and my wife’s name was mentioned, which stated that the biometric card will be delivered within 7-10 working days and stuffs like that and second document giving information about ILR. He asked us to check whether we have got all our documents or not. He gave returned our entire document except employer letter. By the time we left PEO, it was 12:00.
I had a nice experience, didn’t see any IT issues. I saw one packet at the case worker desk stating documents to be collected – it may be of people who faced IT issue.
I think I had covered most of thing. If any of you have any questions just let me know, I am happily try to help you. All the best for you all who is waiting for their application and who is going to apply.
BR
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dont know why and he just adviced me that go to bloody Belfast, Birmingham any where else in the UK but not Croydon.