Tips on sorting documents for Premium ILR Service

[workingmama]

In December my husband applied for ILR due to marriage to me (born and bred British Citizen) and I thought I would share how I sorted out the documents needed for his appointment at Croydon.

The guy that processed my husbands application was amazed how organised we were and it took very little time to sort everything out and it took us less than 3 hours from start to finish.

I got one of those ring binder folders with the plastic sleeves inside and sorted everything out into sections which were clearly marked such as Birth certificates, passports, address proof, income and banking evidence. I then placed the items into these seperate plastic sleeves in date order with photo copies of each items behind the originals.
When we arrived and the member of staff asked for each item I was able to find it easily, hand over the original plus the photo copy, which he quickly checked, kept the copy and handed back the original and that meant it took literally no time at all and he was pleased he was not going to have to stand at a photo copier or have to wait while we hunted through papers to find what he was asking for.

I am sure many already plan to do this, but while there and before during the FLRM application I saw applicants with huge bundles of papers getting confused, not being able to find something etc and you could see both the staff member and the applicant getting quite stressed.

If you do opt for the premium service get your papers sorted into something like we did, make copies of everything so you can hand over the original and copy quickly, it saves so much time and stress and means you can double check everything easily before you head off for your preimum appointment. The man who dealt with my husbands case told him he was very lucky he had such an organised wife and thanked me for making his job so easy.