Travel during Citizenship application process

[anandb]

Hi,

My wife is planning on applying for her Citizenship soon based on PBS Dependant + ILR + 1 year.
However, she has few work + personal travel plans and I want to check when can she travel internationally with her current Indian passport during the process below - I have added in my estimates on process duration:

a) Between online application submission and UKVCAS appointment for Document upload (est. 1-4 weeks)
b) Between UKVCAS appointment and Application approval (est. 4-12 weeks)
c) Between Application approval and Oath ceremony letter (est. 1-3 weeks)
d) Between Oath ceremony letter and Oath ceremony (est.1-12 weeks)
e) Between Oath completion and UK passport arrival (est. 3-5 weeks)

Can I also confirm that she will not be required to submit her UK Biometric card and current Indian passport at the UKVCAS or anytime in the process?

Thank you,
Anand

[CR001]

She can travel once she has submitted and attended her biometrics.

No originals are handed in anymore.

Once she has attended her ceremony, she has 5 days to rerun her ILR brp card so should apply for her passport as soon as she has her certificate of naturalisation.

She is only British once she has attended the ceremony, she can travel freely up till then with her Indian passport and brp card.

Note approvals of citizenship can take up to 6 months, sometimes longer.

[dori_fish]

Yep as mentioned above - you can freely travel after attending the UKVCAS appointment for ILR application. They only need to look at and scan your passport documents, you can keep them and use to travel immediately after.

After you receive the ILR status, you then have to wait for 1 year before you can apply for naturalisation / British citizenship. Suggest you be careful with travel plans at that point, because after your naturalisation gets approved you attend the citizenship ceremony to fully become British. Your BRP / ILR card then becomes void and you must apply for the UK passport which requires you to send in all foreign passports for application purposes and currently takes 1-2 weeks to complete. If there are plans to travel immediately after citizenship ceremony, would suggest to delay to a future date where there are no travel commitments. Hope this helps!