eea FP, 5 months and no response

[monar]

I am a Dutch national living in UK since August 2000 and have an Indefinite leave to remain in UK. I have studied here in UK and currently am working in a pharmaceutical company in London.

I got married in Pakistan on 17th January 2018 and applied for my husband to join me in UK as an EEA family on 1st March 2018.

1st March 2018 – submitted application for EEA Family permit in Mirpur, Pakistan

14th March 2018 - received an acknowledgment email from UK visa & Immigration services stating that they have received my husband’s EEA family permit application, but as his case is not straightforward it will take longer to process

24th May 2018 – I contacted the UKVI after waiting for 60 working days and was told that our case has been escalated and that I should hear back within 15 working days

3rd June 2018 - received an email stating that they cannot give us a time scale of when the decision will be made

15th June 2018 - still no response, rang UKVI again and they escalated my case again.

1st July 2018 – went to see my local MP, who then wrote to UKVI on 2nd July enquiring about my case. He was told on 27th July that they are working on my husband’s application and will inform us when the decision is made.

6th July 2018 – rang UKVI and case was escalated again

7th August 2018 - email received stating that case has been escalated once again and decision will be made as soon as possible and that they appreciate our patience.

14th August 2018 – 115 working days after the initial submission of application, we still haven’t heard anything back from UKVI.

Can any of you please suggest what i should do next?

[alihamza]

hi am in same position i have made my application 27/04/2018 still no respond. am really stressed and surprised i do no how long should I have to wait.....any news like same my situation

[monar]

Hi guys,

its now been 6.5 months since we have made our application and still havent heard back yet. reading on this forum, i can tell this is not normal. however, i am not sure what action we can take at this point other than waiting for UKVI to make a decision.

any suggestions??

[NikiGio]

That must be frustrating - as you know, the HO has 6 months to deal with applications, so people can't really complain or chase before that period has passed.
I know from another immigration forum on Facebook that some cases have taken even 9 long months - in that person's case, her application was accepted in the end. Her advice for those people who are over the 6 months was to be patient and contact their MP - you've already done that, so I suggest you contact your MP again.
FYI, another person on the forum had to wait 15.5 months for his case to be accepted! His case was a bit of a saga, but he complained to the HO twice and he complained to the Ombudsman too (who then concluded that the HO were following their guidelines in handling his case). The reason the HO gave for the delay was that they were looking into his good character, which he was very surprised at considering he'd never even handed his library books in late...
Contacting the MP seems to be the best route to getting a solution, and some people have also contacted Solvit (http://ec.europa.eu/solvit/index_en.htm).

[monar]

thank you NikiGio for your reply.
as you said this has been really frustrating, I've been to my MP twice with no result so far. I've also complained to HO and still waiting to hear from them.

[NikiGio]

OK, so if you've already been to the MP twice with no joy - next step could be sending the HO a formal complaint letter, contacting Solvit and also complaining via the Ombudsman - see https://www.ombudsman.org.uk/making-complaint
https://www.ein.org.uk/news/ombudsman-u ... department
Good luck.