Hi all,
Me and my wife successfully obtained ILR at PEO Croydon last April 15th. As many of the things we needed to know about the application came from this forum, we'd like to share our experience in case it might help you with your own application.
I was a Work Permit holder for a bit more than 5 years. My wife arrived at the UK a few months ago with a WP dependent visa. The only difficulty in our application was the days of absence from the UK, I had a total of 460 days, with 199 of them being personal absences. We were advice to make a postal application, but we decided to try our luck in the PEO anyway.
After April 6th UKBA changed the rules for SET(O) applications, and now they are more expensive for both applications by mail or in person at a PEO. Also, there are extra requirements regarding the minimum salary depending on the main applicant's employment. These are listed as Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) codes.
In order to apply for ILR as a Work Permit holder on SET(O), we took with us at the PEO Croydon:
- Confirmation e-mail (booking reference) for PEO appointment. That's the first thing they'll ask you at the door.
- SET(O) form filled up by hand. Before the new rules there was also an electronic version, but that meant paying by card before the appointment in person.
- Life in the UK test pass letters.
- 2 photographs with full name written at the back. The cost was 6 pounds for 4 pictures. Just in case, there's a photobooth inside PEO Croydon (next to the tills, 1st floor).
- Current passport with the active Work Permit visa.
- Any older passports that might have entry stamps and older visas.
- Letter from my employer stating that I was presently employed and still needed. Here, due to the new rules, they also had to add the SOC code for my present job and my salary to show it was higher than the minimum required.
- Letter from my employer confirming any absences in the past 5 years due to business purposes.
- A spreadsheet with personal absences in the past 5 years (this was the tricky bit for us). This was attached to the SET(O) form.
- Bank statements for the past 3 months.
- Payslips for the past 3 months
- P60's for the past 5 years
- PLUS, photocopies of all mentioned documents, as they'll need them anyway.
Other things we took but didn't use:
- Proof of cohabitation. In our case the rental agreement had both of our names on it.
- Certificate of marriage (with official translation in English just in case)
- Bank statements for my wife
About the spreadsheet with personal absences: as my wife had been living abroad for the past 4 years or so, I had to travel frequently during weekends within Europe. After reading about other people's experiences with this type of application, we filled up a spreadsheet and counted only the days away from the UK (the day when I was flying out or returning are not counted). We also added added a column with the page number on the passport with the stamps for the days out/in (this was quite a challenge given the number of flights I had made in the past 5 years!). In the end, I had a total of 199 personal days of absence, most of them being weekends. The lady checking our application typed all the dates of absence into the computer and at the end she mentioned that she hadn't taken into account any absences during weekends. I guess she did this to make a total of 180 days, but this was totally up to her own discretion...
About the bank statements: I'm with Natwest and a few years back they swapped to online statements only. Allegedly it would take about 7 working days to get any bank statement by post for free (after 2 weeks I'm still waiting for the banks statements to arrive by post!). Of course I didn't have enough time to wait for the statements to arrive by post, so what the bank accepted doing for me was putting stamps on printed screen statements. In addition they wrote a letter stating the balance on my accounts, together with my name and address. The problem with screen statements is they don't display any name and address, and then we were not sure whether they will be accepted for the application. I went to 3 Natwest branches, and in only one of them they accepted to print the letter and put stamps on screen statements. As for the other 2 branches, one of them refused doing anything for me due to a new policy (too many people continuously asking for this) and the remaining branch could put stamps on printed statements but only as a "favour" (wow! great customer service Natwest South Kensington!).
About the immigration consultants advertising in the web: we sent a couple of emails looking for advice and maybe hire someone to help us in the process. We only got an answer from one of them, and they told us they will not be able to help us ... because our case was not straightforward. Not entirely sure what their business is then ...
In summary our appointment went like this:
We had our appointment at 10:30, we arrived around 9:50 in order to go through security checks. The first thing they did was asking for the confirmation letter, then a person will roughly check some documents: application form, passports, days of absence, life in the UK test. After that, we were given a number in order to pay and then sit down to wait for the personal appointment. We had to wait around 2 hours as there was a delay in their systems. We were called around 1PM, the person was a lady who was very nice to us, she checked our paperwork and granted ILR. As I mentioned before, the only thing she mentioned was that she didn't take into account the personal absences on weekends, and she double-checked that I met the new salary requirement. We left about 2PM and had to pick the passports back around 3PM (they close at 4 anyway).
We hope this information is useful! Best of luck to everyone applying for ILR and thanks to everyone who posted their own experiences in the past, as this really helped us. Chao.
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