Proof of current address and continuous residence in UK

[cherrypie]

All,

Today I attended the Croydon UKVCAS to complete my naturalization application. I was asked to provide proof of current address and proof of continuous residence in the UK.

Considering that I was granted ILR in 2017 and I had already proved residence in the UK (for my ILR application) and my naturalisation application checklist only asked for my passport I did not have anything with me this morning to provide as proof of current address apart from my drivers licence. My drivers licence was scanned and uploaded but i was told that I needed to provide further evidence such as council tax notices, bank statements or utility bills and I had the option of delaying the submission of the application to the Home Office till 10pm tonight so that I could upload the remaining documents. I also had to sign a form which stated this and this was uploaded onto my account.

Having a look at table 1 in the below link I decided to include council tax notices and P60s for the last 5 years and uploaded these to my account as proof of residence in the UK. I assume this will also be sufficient as proof of current address.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... -in-the-uk

My current passport, life in the UK test pass notification and UK Naric letter were checked, scanned and uploaded during the appointment. I had already uploaded these documents before the appointment.

I uploaded the following documents before the appointment:
- Current passport (all pages)
- Expired passprot (all pages)
- BRP
- Life in the UK pass notification
- Degree certificate
- UK NARIC letter confirming my degree is comparable to a UK degree
- Letter from my university confirming my degree was taught in English (I have used this letter for all previous visas)
- 2 x referee declarations
No changes were made to my account with regard to the documents I had uploaded.

A little bit about me to put all of this into context:
Nationality - South African
Current immigration status - ILR (granted 2017)
Previous visas - Tier 1 (2008 - 2016 but I was not in the UK from 2009 till late 2012) & Tier 2 (2016 - 2017).

I hope this will be helpful and of use to anyone applying now or in the future.


Cheers

[CR001]

There is no requirement to prove current address or residence with extra documents if you have followed the UK immigration rules route. It applies to EU (non British) and eea family members only as their passports don't get stamped.

Your passports for the 5 years are sufficient.

[cherrypie]

Yes CR001, that's what I thought as well. It was clearly obvious that it was a non EU application. The form that I had to sign to confirm that I will upload further documents stated all my details including my nationality as South African.

Even the link in my original post states that the Home Office will carry out their own checks and if unsatisfactory you will need to provide further documents. I really don't know why I was for further proof today.

I have done a lot of UK visa applications which have all been approved. I thought this would be one which was most straight forward and for the first time I was asked for additional documents.

[CR001]

Sopra steria staff are not immigration agents or home office staff and purely a third party biometric and document check service. A few members have had similar issue to yours.

As long as they key documents have been submitted there should be no issue.

[hermanthegerman]

Did you pay for any of their extra services like the document checking one?

I attended the same center in February as an EU citizen and was not asked for anything at all except my passport.
So no proof of current address and certainly not asked to provide P60s etc (I had uploaded them before but no one looked at anything but my scanned passport and they rescanned the original).

I suspect as pointed out above they got carried away/confused...