Home office cockup with address

[nk148]

Hello,

So I made an application through NCS on 4th November last year, biometrics done a month later. Last week I called home office to get an update on the application as the 6 month period had passed. They called me back today to give me an update and while the lady was asking me to confirm my details I was shocked to discover that my address (which I haven't changed) didn't match the address on her records! She told me that the application was decided on 9 February (that is three months ago!!) and in all likelhood they sent the letter to the wrong address!! she filled in a form with the correct address but asked me to also email the home office to inform them of my address. The amazing thing is that they sent me the acknowledgment letter in december but somehow managed to modify the address on their record since. And now it is up to ME to inform them of the correct address which they should already have.
Has anyone heard of something like that before? Is there a quicker way to make them correct their mistake. I don't want to waste another month or two waiting for them to reply to emails.

Thanks,

[sshah20]

Ring your local council may be they still have your certificate. Samething happend with me. Applied in Nov. Home office sent my approval letter to wrong address in first week of feb. I was also waiting for the six month but luckily I got a letter from my local council to on 30th April to attend the ceremony. When I spoke to the council they said we received your certificate 3 months ago.

Hurry up and call your council.

[1kiril]

You had three month from the approval date to take an oath or affirmation. After 3 months you will have to reapply for citizenship unless HO agrees to extend the deadline since it was their fault.

[nk148]

This is an update on my case with some advice for anyone who applied or thinking to apply for citizenship.

Today I finally got the approval letter, 4 months after the initial decision was made. As mentioned above, the home office had made a mistake by sending the approval letter to the wrong address, so I never knew about it until I contacted them after the 6 months waiting period. I was also worried that the delay would prevent me from attending the ceremony because of the 90-day ceremony requirement, but the date of the new letter is 9 June so it looks like I can still attend the ceremony based on this new date. So all looks good now!!

Now since I was baffled by the fact that the home office had the wrong address on their records despite sending me the acknowledgement letter and biometric invitation letter to my address back in December, I went back to these letters and checked the addresses on them. I discovered that the acknowledgement letter had the correct address on it but the biometric invitation letter had the wrong one. The difference between the addresses was just the house name (I live in a block of apartments). The flat number, city and post code were all the same. I haven't noticed this small error at the time mainly because, well, I got the letter in the first place. Both letters were in the same envelope, with the acknowledgement letter, with the correct address, on top of the biometric letter. So I instinctively turned my focus away from the address to the other details on the biometric letter with the name, dob and nationality. My guess is that the case worker who inserted my details on the system, used one of those "lookup address" tools where you insert the flat number and post code, but chose the wrong house number/name without bothering to double check. So the letter probably ended up in my neighbours house instead!

So my advice to everyone is to always check the address on the biometric invitation letter, it could be wrong even if you get the letter!! I know that the notes on the letter asks you to check the personal details, but it specifically refers to the name, dob and nationality details. I lost 4 months because of this unfortunate (and stupid) error made by the home office. If any of the moderators are reading this, it could be useful to move this information to one of the sticky topics so that people take this into consideration when they apply. It seems others on this forum had similar (maybe not exact) issues before.

Thanks,

[sanjaywakhare]

Thanks nk148 for the advice. Strange these things could happen. I once had faced such error but it was the post-man's mistake. Address was correct but postman by mistake put the letters into neighbor's letterbox. I was lucky the neighbor was kind enough to pass it on to me.

In your case if the neighbor had kept the letter in common/reception/notice area, it would have saved you a lot of trouble.

Anyways glad your issue is resolved without re-applying.

[Noetic]

I once got a letter for the correct house number but for a town in Australia...

[1kiril]

There was that one time when I applied for PR, HO sent my passport and all my paperwork to my old address where I hadn't lived for ages although acknowledgement letter was address to my current address. Luckily, I've included pre-paid special delivery envelope, addressed to my current address which was ignored, I was able to track it and collect it myself. If I hadn't included that envelope there would be no way of me knowing where it ended up. Weird.

[Noetic]

There was that one time when I applied for PR, HO sent my passport and all my paperwork to my old address where I hadn't lived for ages although acknowledgement letter was address to my current address. Luckily, I've included pre-paid special delivery envelope, addressed to my current address which was ignored, I was able to track it and collect it myself. If I hadn't included that envelope there would be no way of me knowing where it ended up. Weird.

That's why I just renewed my redirection from my previous address, just in case!

[nk148]

I wish it was sent to my next door neighbour, he would have forwarded it to me. The trouble is that it was sent to the block of flats next to mine, with the same flat number. Whoever got it probably thought the letter was addressed to someone who previously lived in their flat. And it wasnt just a typo in the house name, it was a completely different (and valid) house name down the road, so pretty certain the case worker wanted to make his/her life easy by using "find my address" tool but selected a house with a different name than mine.