Why do you feel that a Schengen visa is inappropriate? Are you intending to spend a holiday in mainland Europe? The principle is that she should have the right to accompany me on short breaks to Europe at short notice. Right now if we wanted to go for a long weekend in Paris we would need weeks may...

Looked at Schengen and doesn't seem appropriate. Need to submit a travel itinerary etc. Sort of defeats the purpose I feel. So basically it turns out the only real option is to argue with airline check-in counter staff brandishing a marriage certificate and, if successful, be prepared to argue the s...

So basically UK citizens are not EEA nationals when they reside in the UK?

That thread was about the BRP card which they didn't give us in the end so it was irrelevant.

Plenty of other threads lead us to believe the EEA Residence Card was what we needed?

So wasted our time and money then?

Hi Casa. Everyone on this forum suggested that getting an EEA Residence Card was the best approach to ease EU travel for a non-EEA spouse. So we did that.

lol?

Have they gone mad in the EEA processing center?

We only applied for it to make EU travel easier! We don't even "need" it...

They said my British passport was insufficient evidence of the right to work in a EEA member state. Good lord.

Yes and to summarise I managed to get them to overturn the refusal by sending them the PDF files via e-mail. An ECM reviewed the case and overturned it on the spot. Not saying it will work for everyone of course; I think it was an easy overturn for them to make based upon the overwhelming evidence t...

Picked up her passport today. All resolved. It is a 33 months visa, not a vignette. I guess our application was just a few days before they brought in the Biometric Residence Permit requirement. I think we broke some sort of record. 1 week to go from outright refusal and contemplating the appeal pro...

Wondering if the BRP card will allow my wife and I to travel to EEA countries? Everything about the BRP suggests it was introduced because of pressure from the EU and that it conforms to all these special EU standards. Which makes me think it is just as good as a UK Residence Permit in terms of cont...

Thanks for all your help and support Casa and everyone else. The last week was incredibly stressful but it seems like less than a week later everything has worked out for us.

Yup

Mr E___

Yes the visa will be issued once we get her passport.


Entry Clearance Manager

Dear Mr E____ Thank you for sending us your NatWest company statements. The application has been reviewed in light of the further information provided with these statements and the decision to refuse has been overturned. I apologise for the inconvenience this has caused. I would be grateful if you ...

I have some news but not going to share it until we have her passport back, hopefully middle to late next week.

Paste the full email body here and it is possible to tell you right now if its Accepted or Rejected just by looking at the content.

Category F is your route. Same as me. Combine your PAYE and Dividend and that is the figure you should declare on the form.

No reply from them as yet. I just sent a chaser email and a reminder that we paid for priority service.

Note I sent the PDFs on a separate email just in case their email servers block anything with attachments.

We have replied to them asking how do we formally re-submit the bank statements. Since their email seemed to imply we would re-submit them via email. But we have asked if they would like them as paper hardcopy via postal mail. I attached to the email all the PDF files of my online statements, just i...

Well here's something you don't see everyday: Dear Mr E____ Thank you for your email which has been referred to the Entry Clearance Manager. For us to further assess the application, kindly re-submit the company bank statements by replying to this email. Yours sincerely Correspondence Team, Manila V...

Hi guys/gals

What should we put on a cover letter?

I understand it is somewhat important to include a cover letter detailing a certain amount of context as to why we want to settle together in the UK?

Does anyone have a list of ideas for roughly what we should include?

Thanks.

I searched the Ombudsman's public records and found a few cases like mine where NatWest lost cases over this matter. So further the previous advice, if you have suffered a Visa refusal as a result of NatWest's inconsistent and inability to promptly offer the bank statements in the requested format t...

Okay so the bank manager read her employee handbook over the weekend and come Monday she had changed her tune. My heart sunk when speaking to her when she said she isn't allowed to certify any documents. But it transpired that her and NatWest's idea of "certifying" is different from UK Imm...

Thanks Casa. That's what we suspected but it's good to hear it from you

Will just pay it again and use the new reference number. Contest the refund later.

We are going to re-apply now that NatWest have done a U-turn and decided they can certify my business bank statements (see other thread). But we have a question. Do we need to pay another NHS Surcharge to get a new IHS number? Or can we use the same IHS number? It said on refusal the IHS would get r...

It's okay. My parents local branch is going to do it on Monday. They will post it to them since I've now changed the statements correspondence address (via telephone to their Direct Business Banking line) to my parents address. They won't just hand the documents over to my parents which I can sort o...