This is my first post, but I've been a reader of this board for a few months.
I'm from the Newham council too, and I must say that I regret I didn't pick a different council for the ceremony.
I received my invitation letter from the HO a few weeks ago, and the letter is dated before Xmas. Yet, I kept getting the "Home Office reference not found" on the online booking system. I phoned the council and HO, the HO said I need to ask the council, and the council said they had a backlog of certificates from HO, and don't know what's the status on that backlog. The person from Newham council on the phone suggested me to send an email to
register.office@newham.gov.uk to ask anything specific related to the citizenship certificate and ceremony. So I sent an email to them, but never heard anything back. All of that was about 3 weeks ago.
Then, last week, the online booking system found my record, and I successfully booked the ceremony for 02/02/2021. Everything seemed working out at the end, but it turns out that was too early to celebrate. I got this email from the Newham council today.
Unfortunately due to the increase in mortality within Newham, means we need to focus all our efforts into the registration of deaths to allow families to be able to make arrangements for the funerals of their loved ones. At this present time all ceremonies have been suspended and we are not taking any bookings for any ceremonies for this month.
We are in the process of setting up virtual ceremonies, hopefully by the end of this month. All residents who have already booked ceremonies on line and were cancelled due to lockdown will be contacted and offered a new booking once we are able to resume this service.
So this is it. It's cancelled, and I doubt they will be able to setup the the virtual ceremonies in time. It all goes back to the endless waiting again.
I guess those who had booked a ceremony for February with the Newham council will receive this email soon.
I'm so disappointed.