steelroof - Seeing as the HO found out you were working 35 hours a week and consequentially removed you, its massively unlikely they'd credit the time as being a full-time student... I'd say write it off.

As Dawie suggested, try your luck with an HSMP application.

Hi roger, 1) Yes you do. A marriage certificate is the usual proof. The NCS will photocopy it and give you back the original. 2) I believe she needs to be in the country on the day the Home Office recieves her application (God alone knows why, but still..) They usually receive it a day or two after ...

natques - They are only interested in judgements given against you, not for you. So dont declare that one.

Good luck with your application, and keep us posted!

It's extremely unlikely that anyone will actually come to your house as part of enquiries, thats absolutely not the norm. They do their checks regarding your address (and pretty much everything else) via computer systems and if there are any queries they will write to you. Your named referees might ...

Agreed. I used NCS and my passport was only ever out of my hands long enough for them to photocopy it. The £35 or so is well worth it, not to mention the usually faster processing time that comes with using NCS.

First2last4 ... ok then, lets hear what your wife thinks of your masterplan before passing judgement?

But we wont, will we? Because what youre doing is deception. Pick a biblical quote thats more appropriate to your situation.

Just my 2p.

Jay007:

*Everyone* applying for naturalisation needs to take the test, regardless of your level of English or where you come from.

Shabrawy:

The test certificate will still be valid in 10 months or however long- it doesnt expire.

When I phoned to make my appointment with the NCS (Newcastle) I was also told to bring bank statements and payslips, but when I arrived on the day - they didnt even want to see them! So my application went in with no financial information but still succeeded.

Darksquid - congrats - a wonderful pressent indeed!

My son has just applied for his naturalisation, aiming to beat the new fees at the end of the month.

Movado - congrats!

From several reports here Birmingham PEO does sound like a much friendlier and more pleasant experience than Croydon.

Hi Rambo, Employment is NOT in any way a requirement for naturalisation. Her employment status will not affect her application at all so long as she meets the other requirements. I stand to be corrected on this next point but - if she's never had a taxable income in the UK I dont think she would nee...

Hi, you dont say under what conditions you will be in UK but if its settlement on a work permit then the following describes my obtaining a bank account the day after I arrived here back in 2001. 1) They wanted proof of where I lived. In my case I provided a rental agreement. 2) Proof of a job. In m...

The time a naturalisation application could also be affected by the level of computerisation of the country's Home Office or equivalent. It may simply take some countries longer to get the details the UK Home Office requests.

Thats assuming they even check, of course! No-one seems to know for sure.

My (now ex) wife's spouse visa took 2-3 weeks back in 2001. She also posted from Durban.

After about 10 days she took to phoning them daily, but I dont know if that helped.

Dawie, I dont recall seeing any requirement to be physically in the country while applying for a passport? You should definitely pack a copy of your naturalisation cert in case some immigration jobsworth pulls you up on the no-longer-valid ILR technicality. Massively unlikely and surely they have be...

Hey Dawie,

Congratulations, dit was blitzvinnig! Home straight now...

Some countries (like South Africa) require dual-nationals to use their 'local' passport for entry into that country.

As far as I'm aware this only ever applies when entering your original country, not any other.

Britain does not care which passport you travel on, so long as it's valid.

first of all, UK law applies to everyone in the UK - work permit holders, visitors and citizens alike. When you eventually apply for naturalisation they will run your details by the police. All that can count against you are criminal convictions or strong suspicions of wrongdoing. Any police report ...

Thanks Dawie, yeah the form does seem to have been slapped together in a hurry. The guide says one of the referees has to be 'professional' but the form itself fails to ask either of the referees for that information - so how will they even know? Unless they can call up that info on their computers ...

My son is applying for naturalisation and asks whether his British girlfriend can sign as one of the referees supporting his application. The guide does say the referees may not be family but I guess 'girlfriend' would be ok. Can anyone confirm? I notice that since my own naturalisation application ...

I was told by the post office 'check and send' lady to ignore the parent/grandparent bit as it doesnt apply to naturalised citizens, and my application went through fine.

Nope they didnt really appear to care about my sons situation, in fact doing the same-day-decision thing probably only gives them a few minutes to process each application. Do it through a solicitor, if it's London they send their rep along to Croydon with a batch of applications all pre-checked and...

Hi Saloman, I took the same-day-decision option when applying for ILR (Croydon), and had a solicitor put in both our applications together as a family. If yours is a straightforward case I'd recommend doing the same. I dont think my son had to even sign anything, let alone fill in a form - my solici...

My son's situation was very similar to yours - he entered the UK as a 15 year old dependant on my work permit, finished school, turned 18 and was working full-time on his gap year at the time of applying for ILR. Like you, he had deferred starting uni to avoid the foreign-student fees. We both had n...

I'm surprised the HO doesnt want us to think of the NCS as a priority service, I'd go as far as to say they should actively advertise it as such. My impression of the HO has always been one of battle-weary caseworkers struggling to keep up with a daily avalanche of 500+ new applications. By distribu...