Will an Entry Clearance Manager review our application?

[madhouse92]

Firstly here's the background information......my South African wife's application has been refused because the ECO wasn't satisfied that we can maintain ourselves without recourse to public funds. Granted my account is in overdraft, but within it's authorised overdraft limit. However, from our perspective the ECO has missed out some important factors when making their decision:

1) My account was £4k overdrawn but have managed to reduce by £1.8k within 2 months because of the surplus income I have at the end of each month.
2) My expenditure never exceeds my income.
3) My property is in positive equity to the value of approx £15K.

Now the most important factor which the ECO appears to have not taken into account is the fact that my wife has a full-time job position waiting for her on return to the UK. Evidence of this was sent with the application form by means of an employment letter from her employer. The job is in fact the same job she worked at for 12 months while here in the UK on her working holiday visa. One of the reasons we reckon the ECO didn't take this into account was because when my wife opened the package with the returned documents, all her supporting evidence was still paper clipped together in the same order they were sent off. Whilst all of mine were "slung" back into the folder in an inorderly fashion. Now unless the ECO was ultra efficient and put her supporting evidence back in the same order, then got fed up and simply put mine back in any old order, our guess is that the ECO only noticed the overdraft on my bank statements and saw that as reason enough to decline the application.

Our intention is to complete the appeal form along with the following new evidence:

- Bank statement to show that my overdraft has been reduced by £1.8k over the past 2 months.
- An income/expenditure sheet to show my monthly outgoings are less than my monthly income.
- Last mortgage statement and a property valuation to show I have postive equity.
- A second letter of employment detailing salary, working hours etc to prove my wife has a full-time job on her return to the UK.
- A second income/expenditure sheet to show that along with my wife's proposed salary we will have approx £1.4k remaining at the end of the month.

Our plan is to send all this directly to Pretoria where tha application was originally processed in the hope that an Entry Clearance Manager will review the application.

Now this is where I'd like some advise from anyone who has done this:

1) In your view would the above new evidence be sufficient to overturn the decision?
2) Is it common for an Entry Clearance Manager to overturn a refused application?
3) Does anyone know roughly how long we would have to wait to hear what the Entry Clearance Managers decision is?

Any help/advise would be apprciated.

[vinny]

Best to keep to the same thread.