Hi douces,
"can you tell me the experience at the peo"
The most important thing I can recommend is that you should put the bills, statements etc in chronological order to make the interviewer's job easier (even though you have to pay £950
Here is the summary,
My wife and I went to Croydon office at 9:00am and we took our baby with us. We were out by 12:30 with an ILR visa stamp on my pasport. First, if your appointment is for 11:00, don't expect to get in any earlier than that, however make sure you are in line 30 minutes before your interview time.
Allthough I had prepared a big binder of bills, bank statements etc. these are the documents the interviewer looked at;
ONLY original statements/bills (Halifax/HSBC Bank, gas, electricity, telephone etc.) ABSOLUTELY no photocopies, if I were you I wouldn't bother photocopying any documents unless you wish to keep the photocopies at home in case they decide to keep your documents temporarily.
We gave 2 joint bank satements (approximately £6,000 savings in total), payroll slips, 2 joint utility bills and statements and bills from approximately 10 sources under both my and my wife's individual names.
The interviewer took 1 statement from each year (2006 and 2007) for each statement/bill etc. and photocopied them. She made some calculations on a piece of paper and wanted to see our baby's birth certificate. No further questions were asked. It was a very straight forward application. Maybe it was due to the fact that my wife was there with me and we have a new born baby.
The interview process took approximately 20 minutes, however getting inside building and waiting for the actual visa to be placed on the passport is the time consuming part (approximately 2 hours maybe less).
I hope this helps...
