We applied for my husband to get a spouse visa in May 2004 at the consulate in his home country. His application was referred to the Home Office and the visa was refused in December. We lodged the appeal in January, but have been told by the entry clearance officer that as the Home Office made the decision to refuse, the appeal is reviewed by the Home Office Appeals Processing Centre, and that they can't give any timescale as to when the APC will reply. Does anyone have any experience of this and how long it might take for a reply? I can't find any guidance, and I'm not sure what happens if the Home Office decides to uphold the decision, do they start to prepare the case to go before the adjudicator straightaway, or what?
I have no idea how long its going to take
Our circumstances have changed since the time we made the application. We are considering whether or not to make a fresh application. If we did so, would it be conceivable that the entry clearance officer would make the decision themselves, or would they automatically refer the application to the Home Office again in order to marry up the files? If the application were to be refused locally, would the appeal process go through any quicker, or would it make no difference as we already have one appeal lodged and they would want to consider the two in tandem?
