Date Applied (at PEO-Croydon) : 21st March 2012
Date additional documents received PEO : 22nd Mar 2012
Date ILR approved letter: 23th April 2012
Date Passports Received : 25th April 2012 (delivered Signature Required with Royal Mail)
Date Biometric residence permit received: still waiting
I've found this forum really helpful, and so thought I'd share my experiences to return the favour:
I applied for SET(O) after living and working here for 5 years under my Ancestry Visa (I'm from New Zealand) and since the forms looked pretty straight forward, I filled in the paper work and booked a premium application at Croydon. I work for a large multinational and travel a lot on business trips - 400+ days away in the last 5 years. Since I did no research other than to follow the actual application form and guidance document, I was stunned to be told that they needed confirmation from my company that my trips were for business reasons. I returned to the office and had my team's assistant write a latter using my carefully prepared spreadsheet of trips as a guide, and couriered the letter back to Croydon PEO the next day.
Then I waited for some confirmation, phone call, email *anything* from the PEO, but heard nothing for two weeks. By this time I'd already had to cancel some business trips, and was getting worried and frustrated at the opacity of the whole process. I called the only contact number I could find and was told that they couldn’t tell me anything about my case, but that my application would now a become postal application and was told the 95% within 6 months target.
Some Google searching led me here, where I found more information than anywhere on the UKBA website. If only I'd come here first I would have saved myself a great deal of worry!
Several weeks of worry pass. Finally, I returned home late last night to find a "while you were out" note for Royal Mail. This morning I picked up the package from my mail centre - my passports, documents and confirmation letter were all there
now I just have to wait for my residents permit...
My biggest frustration and criticism with the process is that the whole month of stress worry and additional work could have been avoided if the actual forms and guidance from UKBA contained the correct information. Why they don't is beyond me. I suspect that a simple change to the form could actually save UKBA many man hours of additional work, not to mention the additional work and stress created for applicants.
