He're is some back story - I've completed online MN1's for my British born kids 3 weeks ago or so, and for a couple of weeks after I was attempting to book a Sopra Steria appointment.
The company advertises two service points in Scotland, which is where I stay - Aberdeen and Glasgow, Aberdeen for me is easy to get to, half an hour from where I live. Glasgow on the other hand 3-4 hours drive one way minimum, involves cost of £200 if you want a weekend appointment or you have to take a day off and children out of school - not so great.
On the Sopra Steria website Aberdeen did not show any available appointments at all, in other centres you can see 4 weeks in advance, this one only shows you 2. I tried at different times during the day, 2 minutes after midnight etc, couldn't get anything. Eventually caved in and booked Glasgow.
I've got no issues with the service, everyone was helpful, it took longer than expected but in general everything was fine.
I mentioned problems with booking the other centre to the staff in Glasgow, and they claimed the centre in Aberdeen is operational but it doesn't have any appointments.
They also said that the Glasgow centre is only being used in around 70%, so financially there is no point to open up another one in Scotland. This basically means in the whole of Scotland there is one service point.
Maybe this isn't a big issue and to be honest I won't have to worry about things like that any longer but i'm a bit fed up with the way immigrants are treated here.
To me, moving a service, you were able to get at your local council and paid good money for, to some third party few hundred miles away is disgraceful. As is pretending to be running multiple centres in the country when in actual fact you've only got one.
I was thinking about complaining about this, but not really sure if there's any point, perhaps writing to an MP would help? What do you think?
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