Unmarried FLR (m) application advice

[anash]

Hi All,

I'm looking for some advice when applying for FLR (m).

Firstly, I have been through hundreds of different threads on this site and found a wealth of knowledge which I thank you all for.

To give you some background:
I'm an Australian currently on a Tier 5 Youth Mobility visa which expires on in August 2012. My girlfriend who I have been with for over 3.5 years is a UK national and we have been living together in the UK for just over 16 months.

Previous to this we were living together in Australia and before settling in the UK we spent 3.5 months travelling.

We have had joint banks accounts for almost 3 years and have been living together for well over 2 years. We have been living in several different places together in both Australia and UK, so we have some documents where were living at the same address but we don't have a huge amount of evidence.

We have also booked an appointment to apply in person on the 12th April, I have spoken to the UKBA about our application and they said it sounded like it was straight forward, but they didn't fill me with confidence. The reason for applying in person is that both my girlfriend and I are required to travel regularly for work and need our passports.

There is also a discrepancy with the online form for FLM (R) on question six, which requires you to fill in a date a place where you will be married. The advice I received from the UKBA about this was to put the date when we started our relationship...BUT said that this advise was be used at my discretion and may not be correct. On the paper form the questioning allows you to pass this question.

So my questions are;

Can anyone give some guidance on the amount of evidence we need for each address we have lived, how many pieces for each address?

Does anyone have advice about the online form?? Do you have to apply online if you are applying in person?

Any advice when applying in person? I'm considering getting some legal/professional advice before applying as I don't want it to be a waste of money.

Finally, even if we are applying in person, how likely is it that we will get our passports back on the day?

Thanks in advance for any help, appreciate it.

Cheers!

[krs133]

Hi anash,

I can help with some of this as my (Australian) girlfriend had her unmarried partner visa approved at Croydon PEO yesterday.

In terms of evidence, you need enough to show you have been living together for the full two year period - it doesn't have to be a large volume, just enough to persuade the caseworker. In our experience, tenancy agreements and joint bank statements were particularly useful. You can also use items of individual correspondence, as long as they demonstrate you are living together. If you feel that the evidence you have is sufficient to demonstrate you gave lived together for the two years, that will be enough.

Online form - no, you don't have to fill in the online form for an application in person. We used the paper form and it caused no problems.

General advice - well, I searched this and other forms for PEO experiences and everyone's is a little different, and ours was different in turn! In our case, the whole process took about four hours, including payment, biometrics and quite a bit of waiting around. We didn't actually meet our caseworker face to face - we handed our documents over a counter and were told consideration would take about two hours, so we left the building, had lunch, came back to be told the application was approved. From the way our document folder had been rearranged it looked like they took about 12 documents as evidence including the three tenancy agreements.

Legal advice - if your application is straightforward I don't personally think it is necessary and I certainly wouldn't pay for anything.

You receive your passport back on the day if there are no further checks to be made on the application but you have to wait about 7 working days for the biometric residence permit and are advised not to make travel arrangements in this period.

Hope this is helpful.

[anash]

Thanks krs133,

Really appreciate you taking the time to reply. You have eased some of my stress over applying

Congrats on getting your girlfriends visa through!