Original Appointment: 10am (Saturday) - booked 42 days in advance the minute the slots opened up
Arrived: 9:05am
Reception (provided appointment later and given ticket number): 9:15am
Application Submission (called by case worker, application updated into system): 9:30am
Biometrics Information Collected (biometrics officer took our application and supporting docs): 9:45am
Ready for Collection: 10:45am
We had a Saturday morning appointment at Croydon PEO, and I must say it is the most seamless and peaceful experience we've ever had. The staff were very very friendly, professional and relaxed, from security to reception to the case workers, which made us feel quite at ease. The staff did mention that only 50 appointments are scheduled for Saturday and being a very quiet day, most applications get processed in 45-60 minutes. Oh, and if you're driving in on Saturday morning, Croydon is quite traffic-free. The Dingwall Road NCP car park was ideal off the main road and the two hours we took cost about £4.30.
The appointment letter did indicate that we would not be let in if we arrived before 9:30am, but took the chance and had no issues. The place was a ghost town!
In terms of documentation, the forums seems to cover a wide spectrum of documentation needed, but based on a few of the forum experiences, we thought we would provide the minimum required (but having the rest in hand as well).
GENERAL
1. PEO appointment email and payment sheet
2. Current/Previous passports
3. Biometric Cards + passport photographs
4. Completed Set(O) form
5. Life in the UK pass notification (for my wife and I)
6. English evidence not required as we're from Australia/USA respectively so passports were sufficient
INCOME
1. Main Applicant payslips (generated on payroll-style A5 paper)
2. Main Applicant Dividend Vouchers (on company letterhead signed by me as Director)
3. 12 months of personal bank statements(with pay and dividend transactions marker-highlighted)
4. Letter from Accountant (on letterhead + signed) indicating I'm a director and that they confirm the income declared
5. Letter from Accountant validating payslips as genuine (my accountant generates my payslips through their payroll service)
6. HMRC annual PAYE CODE notification letter indicating that I am an "employee" of the limited company (I had heard of issues of being considered self-employed)
7. Printout of accountant membership of Institute of Chartered Accountants from website (ICAEW).
COHABITATION
1. Marriage certificate
2. Joint documents - 2 council tax statements, 2 gas statements, 2 bank statements, 1 electricity statement, 2 NHS letters (a bit more than the 6 required just to try to evenly cover dates across 24 months - biggest gap was 6 months)
ABSENCE
This was probably the trickiest to figure out how to represent, given that I was employed for part of the last 5 years and then director for the other half.
1. Spreadsheet listing all absences over last 5 years (departure date, return date, days of absence, reason)
- this worked out to about 400 days over 5 years, mostly on business travel with the longest trip being 5 weeks.
- reasons I used were "holiday - not in employment", "business trip", "holiday - annual leave"
- these dates generally lined up with stamps in the passport, although for some trips there were no stamps
2. Letter from previous employer listing annual leave taken (letterhead/signed)
3. Letter from previous employer listing all business travel (letterhead/sgined)
4. Spreadsheet listing my wife's absences over the last 5 years (not sure this is needed, but I guess it's work done for naturalisation!)
5. Letter from my wife's employer listing annual leave allocation for each year (email only, no letterhead)
Many of the dates on the employer letters did not correspond with the spreadsheet for various reasons (didn't travel as part of annual leave, time off in lieu not tracked).
OTHER INFORMATION
1. Proof of graduation (even though probably not required as I ticked the box indicating please use qualifications accepted in previous Tier 1 application)
2. Previous biometric registration information (to validate questions requiring place/date of original biometric fingerprinting)
3. Original Tier 1 approval letter from Home Office (to validate date of first approval)
We also had photocopies of all these docs but didn't hand them over, and we weren't asked to at any point.
And that was about it. No business bank statements, company VAT registration/returns, incorporation statements, invoices, annual returns etc. In fact, I didn't even take many of these as backup because I was already overwhelmed with the amount of documents! We did get a little bit nervous when we checked the version of the Set(O)form the night before and there was a new one dated Apr 2014. The only difference I could see was the fees. And both Dec 2013 and Apr 2014 forms indicated that the Dec 2013 immigration rules applied. In any case, I was totally over it by then so no energy to even try
What was also interesting is that we had filed each document set in individual transparent "closed" sleeves and when we got it back, we could only see a few of them had been removed (because they weren't placed back in the sleeves)
1) payslips, dividend vouchers, bank statements
2) absences
3) life in the UK
4) accountant documents
None of the others appeared to have been touched. Or they very carefully reinserted the docs back into the sleeves which seems unlikely.
Good luck to the rest of you guys trying and thanks a lot for all the help. Awesome forum and hope the details provided here are helpful.
