Can NHS Prescription penalty charge affect application?

[Gleedo]

Hi Guys,

I'm posting on behalf of my Polish fiance who is about to make her application for British naturalisation and are looking for some advice if possible

We were literally going to send her application off today, but last night we received an NHS penalty charge for a prescription which she claimed as 'free'. This was because back in early May, she filled in the form to get the NHS prescription exemption card as she is pregnant and believed it had been sent by her GP surgery. Two weeks later, she needed to pick up a prescription and the pharmacist noticed she was pregnant and asked if she had the exemption card. She replied that it had not arrived yet. The pharmacist said that as they are backdated, she should be OK to fill in the form to get the prescription for free, which she did.

As it turns out, the surgery had either failed to send the form in or it was lost in the post. So, we filled in another form in July which was sent in, but the surgery 'forgot' to get the GP to sign the application, so we got that sent back to us which we needed to get signed and resend etc. In the end, we eventually got that card through the post this month but only backdated to June.

So it seems that through a number of mistakes at the surgery and taking the advice of a pharmacist, we have ended up with a penalty charge for claiming the free prescription!


Hopefully you are still reading

We feel that we should fight this penalty charge and if we can get a letter from the GP stating that due to a number of administrative errors, we may be able to overturn the penalty.

However, we are unsure if we should wait until we can get this resolved/overturned and then send in the naturalisation application, or pay the penalty and declare this in the application cover letter and be transparent as possible....

Will this penalty even appear in any checks the Home Office make if we decide to just pay it now?

Any thoughts and advice on this are extremely appreciated as she is soooo stressed about this and was in tears last night and didn't sleep a wink. Probably not good for our unborn child either!

I have seen similarish threads but they always state to create a new one, so I did

Thanks.

[KatHof]

Hello,

I am not sure whether I can give you the answer to your question, but I have received a similar letter.
In my situation I was not at fault and only had to produce the number on my exemption card.

There is a contact number on the penalty letter, have you tried calling them to explain. Furthermore I am sure if you speak to your GP they will be able to backdate it for you given that the pregnancy of your wife was registered at a certain date.

You can also mention it in the application, if you do I cannot see it having any consequences.

Best of luck!

[Gleedo]

Thank you for replying KatHof,

I have managed to contact the doctors this morning and they have confirmed that the original letter was sent (though not received at the NHS) on May 8th. So to that end, they are writing us a letter which we can send to challenge the prescription penalty, which should be sufficient to clear her name

I did contact the NHS prescriptions service this morning before that and asked the question about it possibly affecting her naturalisation application, and although they could not be certain, the seemed to think that can only happen if the penalty goes unpaid or unchallenged and ends up with the courts chasing payment etc. I guess that makes sense, but you never know!

Anyways, hopefully this letter from the doctors will be good enough to sort things out, and then she can get on with her application

[equitydealer]

PCNs are not normally declared. Admittedly I’ve not come across one for NHS costs but I don’t see why this needs to be declared in the application form as it hasn’t reached court and cannot result in a criminal conviction.

Here’s the detailed Good Character guidance

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... .0-ext.pdf