**** COVID19 and UKVCAS Appointments **** (ONLY discuss here)

[BTY]

Hi all,
I opted out very last day 7th August and it was at 8:02 pm.
Does anyone know if there was a time deadline like up to 6pm (or working hours)

[CULLINAN]

Hi all,
I opted out very last day 7th August and it was at 8:02 pm.
Does anyone know if there was a time deadline like up to 6pm (or working hours)

There was no time deadline mentioned for 7th August so it would be till midnight.

[UKLL]

Hi all,
I opted out very last day 7th August and it was at 8:02 pm.
Does anyone know if there was a time deadline like up to 6pm (or working hours)

There was no time deadline mentioned for 7th August so it would be till midnight.

Deadline is by 17:00 on Monday 10 August 2020

[CULLINAN]

Hi all,
I opted out very last day 7th August and it was at 8:02 pm.
Does anyone know if there was a time deadline like up to 6pm (or working hours)

There was no time deadline mentioned for 7th August so it would be till midnight.

Deadline is by 17:00 on Monday 10 August 2020

This is only for July applicants. All applicants up until June had a deadline for 7th August.

[jameswilliamson6544]

Just a thought folks. Has anybody contacted their MPs to complain against these shambles?

For the purpose of biometrics appointment on ILR Applications, your local MP will be able to help if you are unable to find biometrics slot on UKVCAS website till end of August or till two months since your application submitted - whichever is later.

[harshitguptaiitr]

A colleague at work has sent the following email this morning, no response yet as it has been just 1 day:

Subject: Help with enrolling biometrics on my Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) Application.

My Full Address including Post Code: <Insert Here>
My Full Name: <Insert Here>

Dear <Name>,

Thank-you for the work you are doing in mitigating the efforts of Covid-19 on both healthcare and the economy. These are challenging periods and I truly appreciate your work for our constituency.

I need your help in the following situation please:

I applied for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) on <Insert Date in DD-MMM-YYYY format> using Standard Route, as UKVI (Home Office) had suspended priority applications.

I now need to enrol for biometrics. While until October 2018, it was possible to enrol for biometrics in our local Post Office, this has since been moved to contractors of UKVI, known as: UKVCAS Sopra Streia.

I am now waiting for almost <Insert number of weeks since application, round to full number> weeks and still unable to book an appointment with UKVCAS Sopra Streia due to no slots being available. UKVCAS Sopra Streia has extremely limited FREE slots in very few cities and rest all are paid appointment slots unlike the option we had with Post Office. I am checking daily on the UKVCAS Sopra Streia for any type of slots, but none are available.

After having paid <Insert Amount> pounds for my ILR application (including biometrics cost), I don't mind paying another unknown amount of money to UKVCAS Sopra Streia for progressing my ILR application, however the lack of appointments is very frustrating and challenging in an already difficult environment this year.

Additionally UKVCAS Sopra Streia are not updating their website frequently to communicate when additional centres will be open for taking appointments.

Can you please discuss this situation with UKVI and if possible:

• Review possibility of using Post Office for enrolling biometrics as was being done as recently as October 2018 - this will help applicants who are required to go to UKVCAS Sopra Streia just for biometrics and no other add-on service. It will also reduce burden on the UKVCAS Sopra Streia.
• Review UKVCAS Sopra Steria performance in terms of communication and making appointments available.
• Review UKVCAS Sopra Streia to standardize the appointment fees and instruct them not to put profit over people given current situation with the Covid-19 and the economy.

I will be forever grateful to you if you could please review this at the earliest.

Thanks,
<Insert your Full Name Here>

[gc362952246]

Just a thought folks. Has anybody contacted their MPs to complain against these shambles?

For the purpose of biometrics appointment on ILR Applications, your local MP will be able to help if you are unable to find biometrics slot on UKVCAS website till end of August or till two months since your application submitted - whichever is later.

hi, can I ask where did you get ' end of August or till two months since your application' from, please?

[atao]

A colleague at work has sent the following email this morning, no response yet as it has been just 1 day:

Subject: Help with enrolling biometrics on my Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) Application.

My Full Address including Post Code: <Insert Here>
My Full Name: <Insert Here>

Dear <Name>,

Thank-you for the work you are doing in mitigating the efforts of Covid-19 on both healthcare and the economy. These are challenging periods and I truly appreciate your work for our constituency.

I need your help in the following situation please:

I applied for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) on <Insert Date in DD-MMM-YYYY format> using Standard Route, as UKVI (Home Office) had suspended priority applications.

I now need to enrol for biometrics. While until October 2018, it was possible to enrol for biometrics in our local Post Office, this has since been moved to contractors of UKVI, known as: UKVCAS Sopra Streia.

I am now waiting for almost <Insert number of weeks since application, round to full number> weeks and still unable to book an appointment with UKVCAS Sopra Streia due to no slots being available. UKVCAS Sopra Streia has extremely limited FREE slots in very few cities and rest all are paid appointment slots unlike the option we had with Post Office. I am checking daily on the UKVCAS Sopra Streia for any type of slots, but none are available.

After having paid <Insert Amount> pounds for my ILR application (including biometrics cost), I don't mind paying another unknown amount of money to UKVCAS Sopra Streia for progressing my ILR application, however the lack of appointments is very frustrating and challenging in an already difficult environment this year.

Additionally UKVCAS Sopra Streia are not updating their website frequently to communicate when additional centres will be open for taking appointments.

Can you please discuss this situation with UKVI and if possible:

• Review possibility of using Post Office for enrolling biometrics as was being done as recently as October 2018 - this will help applicants who are required to go to UKVCAS Sopra Streia just for biometrics and no other add-on service. It will also reduce burden on the UKVCAS Sopra Streia.
• Review UKVCAS Sopra Steria performance in terms of communication and making appointments available.
• Review UKVCAS Sopra Streia to standardize the appointment fees and instruct them not to put profit over people given current situation with the Covid-19 and the economy.

I will be forever grateful to you if you could please review this at the earliest.

Thanks,
<Insert your Full Name Here>

Fair... I found “the contract” with Sopra on “whatdotheyknow” webpage as someone made a public inquiry and If I remember right the KPIs include complaint handling (turnaround) and service updates and as I skimmed through the list I thought they were in breach of all of them.

[jameswilliamson6544]

Just a thought folks. Has anybody contacted their MPs to complain against these shambles?

For the purpose of biometrics appointment on ILR Applications, your local MP will be able to help if you are unable to find biometrics slot on UKVCAS website till end of August or till two months since your application submitted - whichever is later.

hi, can I ask where did you get ' August or till two months' from, please?

It will be unreasonable to ask local MP to pester UKVI / UKVCAS / Home Office just after making an application. However two months with no appointment would seem serious situation for the MP to intervene.

Reason I put end of August is because looking at this forum thread, it seems a lot is planned for August - IDV App, opening of more centres, etc - Hence it is wise to wait till end of August before asking MP to intervene.

With regards to your original question, where did I get this criteria: Nowhere, just what I thought a reasonable person would do before asking MP intervention.

[jameswilliamson6544]

It will be unreasonable to ask local MP to pester UKVI / UKVCAS / Home Office just after making an application. However two months with no appointment would seem serious situation for the MP to intervene.

Reason I put end of August is because looking at this forum thread, it seems a lot is planned for August - IDV App, opening of more centres, etc - Hence it is wise to wait till end of August before asking MP to intervene.

With regards to your original question, where did I get this criteria: Nowhere, just what I thought a reasonable person would do before asking MP intervention.

Plus, if a lot of people send out "Help" on 1st September, it will have the benefit of showing a pattern - assuming a MP gets lots of requests from his/her constituency.

Similarly, if too many MP (actually their office staff) contact UKVI / UKVCAS / Home Office on same topic in the same week, it will have same impact of demonstrating system failure.

Additionally UKVI / UKVCAS / Home Office will not be able to use the excuse of "give us few more weeks" when they would have already taken away 2 months or more from the applicant.

[gc362952246]

Posted by user krishnakumarg in the BC forum.

Thought to paste it here as it may give some insight. The following is the user’s experience quoted:

Hi, I did just now. I got through after about 70 mins of holding the line (low volume speaker in an empty office

Anyway, the lady who answered the phone had a standard set of answers to many of my questions. Applications are considered incomplete until biometrics are submitted. UKVCAS staff do not have the ability to know whether a home office caseworker has actually started looking at the uploaded documents. They said that there is a clear demarcation point between UKVI and UKVCAS, and that their services agreement pertains to only collecting and submitting biometrics and documents to a shared database with UKVI.

When I pushed hard for the IDV app launch date, she said that the app is likely to be launched within the end of the month. Those who applied in March and April will be invited in week 1. Candidates from May and June shall be in week 2, and July applicants will be invited by mid September. She said it's just an internal estimate, and that their customer care team works remotely and have no contact with the app-development team.

She also said that the app development is led by IT contractors of the home office, and UKVCAS have only general inputs, so that the new app can follow roughly the workflow at UKVCAS at a high level.

As for opt-out appointments, she said that sifting through emails is done through a manual process and that those who made the deadlines (Aug 7 & Aug 10) shall be sent appointment emails will be issued beginning the weeks of Aug 17 and Aug 24 respectively.

I didn't want to believe this but it is (the opt out timeline) very likely going to happen.
UKVCAS updated the service point pdf today.
https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/sopr ... gHours.pdf
London her majesty has opening hour now.(one week delay)
stratford and Luton were supposed to be open already (on week 10/aug and 3/aug) but there is no opening hours or detailed news. Therefore the reopening is delayed.
The service reopening points are closely related to the capacity of appointments.

therefore i believe ukvcas doesn't have the capacity of opening up more appointments yet. even if they let every opt outer to book, we might be struggling to find spots.

[Mcp788]

Hi ,

Has anyone submitted docs on Ukvcas ? When I called the guy said don’t submit wait for the email from them. I did receive the email for IDV selection but confused if I Should submit docs or not as I did read somewhere that When they provide logistic. For IDV app we can also submit documents in that!

Thanks

[CULLINAN]

Uploading documents onto the UKVCAS website

If you upload documents to the UKVCAS website, you can submit them to UKVI before completing your biometric or identity verification check. Don’t worry. You only need to upload each document once. This can be via the website, at a Service Point, or through the UKVCAS Identify Verification app.

https://www.ukvcas.co.uk/flash-message- ... geId=74833

Its always best to follow the official updates. These operators have little knowledge of what they pass forward.

[RJ8707]

To my knowledge all immigration applications subject to AT the date of application. Hence, its a matter of judgement. I can not advise on legal matters. Please seek professional opinion if deemed necessary.

Hope this clears the air.

My understanding is that You need to be eligible at the time of the decision which is when the application is reviewed and decided.

Sounds reasonable, but they do not give us choice - by putting into the biometric re-use group and calling it acceleration, these are exceptional circumstances, if it was not for corona and lockdown, there would not be redundancy and delays in applications process...

I was wondering if you checked whether the ILR applications should meet the criteria at date of application or if anything happens between the date of application and decision would affect it ?

Dear all, any further clarity on this? As in if there are redundancies while ILR is due, how is home office handling that (especially given the COVID scenario).

[Thomas_84]

I am waiting patiently and hoping that we will get biometrics invitation email soon.

However, by analysing all situation, it seems that many people have opted out and UKVCAS fell into another trouble. They asked people to optout by sending emails which looks like a manual process and is only appropriate for few people.

If few thousand or even few hundred people opted out at same time then it's not easily possible to process that list manually. Getting details from emails and marking in system manually is a bit of work. According to my opinion, if they don't have any automated system and they are trying to use manual approach this may be the reason of this delay.

Hi,
I agree that the manual approach may be the reason for the delay. But whether it is manual or automatic approach, they should stick to the commitment of allowing people who opted out to book online at least by Friday night this week. Thanks. Regards.

[Thomas_84]

Yeah, so called technology and IT company uses manual process to sort out opt-out emails and it takes them 3 weeks to do it. I wonder, how they managed to get this contract with UKVI.

It feels more like stone age than 21st century. Shall we start using pigeons to post opt-out letters as well?

Pigeons will be faster than the APP.

[HBBB]

I have been eligible for ILR since March and because my dependent had to take english test, I just applied for ILR with Set(o). On last page it says I should book an appointment. So I registered at UKVCAS. It seem it is possible for me to upload documents but there is no appointment in whole country. Is there a particular time of day that appointments are released or I have to keep checking until I can find one? I see in this thread that people could book an appointment just a few days after submission. Would appreciate your help. My current visa is T2(g) and it’s valid until Dec 2020.

[Thomas_84]

Posted by user krishnakumarg in the BC forum.

Thought to paste it here as it may give some insight. The following is the user’s experience quoted:

Hi, I did just now. I got through after about 70 mins of holding the line (low volume speaker in an empty office

Anyway, the lady who answered the phone had a standard set of answers to many of my questions. Applications are considered incomplete until biometrics are submitted. UKVCAS staff do not have the ability to know whether a home office caseworker has actually started looking at the uploaded documents. They said that there is a clear demarcation point between UKVI and UKVCAS, and that their services agreement pertains to only collecting and submitting biometrics and documents to a shared database with UKVI.

When I pushed hard for the IDV app launch date, she said that the app is likely to be launched within the end of the month. Those who applied in March and April will be invited in week 1. Candidates from May and June shall be in week 2, and July applicants will be invited by mid September. She said it's just an internal estimate, and that their customer care team works remotely and have no contact with the app-development team.

She also said that the app development is led by IT contractors of the home office, and UKVCAS have only general inputs, so that the new app can follow roughly the workflow at UKVCAS at a high level.

As for opt-out appointments, she said that sifting through emails is done through a manual process and that those who made the deadlines (Aug 7 & Aug 10) shall be sent appointment emails will be issued beginning the weeks of Aug 17 and Aug 24 respectively.

Thank you for the information ji. Hope at least they will allow us to book online at least next week in the worst case. Thanks. Regards.

[HBBB]

I have been eligible for ILR since March and because my dependent had to take english test, I just applied for ILR with Set(o). On last page it says I should book an appointment. So I registered at UKVCAS. It seem it is possible for me to upload documents but there is no appointment in whole country. Is there a particular time of day that appointments are released or I have to keep checking until I can find one? I see in this thread that people could book an appointment just a few days after submission. Would appreciate your help. My current visa is T2(g) and it’s valid until Dec 2020.

Any idea on this?

[Aerotony]

Guys - if you really need to leave the UK to deal with a serious family emergency such as life-threatening family illness or bereavement abroad, you can try to send the evidences such as medical documents or certificates to your local MP and request for an emergency appointment.

One of my family member is terminally ill and I might need to attend his funeral in the next few weeks. I submitted all the medical documents to the Home Office via my MP four weeks ago. I received a call last night from UKVCAS, and they said the HO has agreed to expedite my application and then booked an emergency appointment for me.

I didn't see any free appointment when I booked mine last night. Hull and Sheffield got second day appointment for £135, and the cost will reduced to £69 for the slots next week. The earliest slot available in Manchester and Birmingham is on 9th of September. I booked an appointment in Sheffield this morning.

The UKVI replied my MP: An application can be expedited in the most serious circumstances, such as life-threatening family illness or bereavement abroad, if such requests are supported by documentary medical evidence. However it will take them exactly 4 weeks to reply or respond to your request (actually its 28 days deadline to reply to a MP's request). The process is very slow and follow-ups won't reduce the waiting time. I would like to recommend you to speak to your local MP now if you're facing similar situation.

[GondalUK]

I am waiting patiently and hoping that we will get biometrics invitation email soon.

However, by analysing all situation, it seems that many people have opted out and UKVCAS fell into another trouble. They asked people to optout by sending emails which looks like a manual process and is only appropriate for few people.

If few thousand or even few hundred people opted out at same time then it's not easily possible to process that list manually. Getting details from emails and marking in system manually is a bit of work. According to my opinion, if they don't have any automated system and they are trying to use manual approach this may be the reason of this delay.

Hi,
I agree that the manual approach may be the reason for the delay. But whether it is manual or automatic approach, they should stick to the commitment of allowing people who opted out to book online at least by Friday night this week. Thanks. Regards.

They are using manual approach, it's now confirmed by UKVCAS as reported by other member in following post:

https://www.immigrationboards.com/briti ... l#p1923017

I think there could be one other reason as well for this delay, following service points were scheduled to open from 10th August and 17th August. The services point which were announced to open from 10th August are already delayed and as a result this caused delay for offering appointments to people who opted out until 10th Aug deadline. I hope as soon as these service points are opened they will start inviting people.

They failed in many of their commitments so far, no body knows how much delay will be there for IDV app, that is technically bigger challenge as compared to other issues.

Service Point Forecast to open during
Gloucester w/c 10 August
Hemel Hempstead w/c 10 August
London - Stratford w/c 10 August
Reading w/c 10 August
Wolverhampton w/c 10 August
Aberdeen w/c 17 August
Coventry w/c 17 August

The above details is taken from following UKVCAS official page:
https://www.ukvcas.co.uk/flash-message- ... geId=56249

[JULY APPLICANT]

Morning everyone,

Don't see much happening over the past two weeks except for the opt out email and discussion around it. Not many posts about anyone booking and attending the biometric appointments. I wonder if there's any real time activity going on at all.

[Thomas_84]

Morning everyone,

Don't see much happening over the past two weeks except for the opt out email and discussion around it. Not many posts about anyone booking and attending the biometric appointments. I wonder if there's any real time activity going on at all.

Yes, this week also seems to be devoid of any email updates.

[ap1410]

Are any July applicants ( who are eligible for appointments ) getting slots and if so for when?

[whdkfk]

Guys - if you really need to leave the UK to deal with a serious family emergency such as life-threatening family illness or bereavement abroad, you can try to send the evidences such as medical documents or certificates to your local MP and request for an emergency appointment.

One of my family member is terminally ill and I might need to attend his funeral in the next few weeks. I submitted all the medical documents to the Home Office via my MP four weeks ago. I received a call last night from UKVCAS, and they said the HO has agreed to expedite my application and then booked an emergency appointment for me.

I didn't see any free appointment when I booked mine last night. Hull and Sheffield got second day appointment for £135, and the cost will reduced to £69 for the slots next week. The earliest slot available in Manchester and Birmingham is on 9th of September. I booked an appointment in Sheffield this morning.

The UKVI replied my MP: An application can be expedited in the most serious circumstances, such as life-threatening family illness or bereavement abroad, if such requests are supported by documentary medical evidence. However it will take them exactly 4 weeks to reply or respond to your request (actually its 28 days deadline to reply to a MP's request). The process is very slow and follow-ups won't reduce the waiting time. I would like to recommend you to speak to your local MP now if you're facing similar situation.

By any chance do you remember what the availability was like in London?