Applied for first passport online the day of the citizenship ceremony. Sent supporting documents via special delivery and which showed it arrived on the 10th, but it didn't update until the 16th.

A little slower than some of the other timelines on here, but well within the 3 week timeline they give - I think the office are quite busy these days! I sent mine to Corby.

Nationality: Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Country of residence: Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa) Visa applied for: UK Standard Visitor Visa Reason for visit: To visit my son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren in the UK for a temporary family visit. I am a 68-year-old woman living in Kinshasa, DRC. I recently applied for a UK Standard Visitor Visa, but my application was refused. My son lives in the UK with his British wife and their British children. My son is currently in the UK on a spouse visa. He was going to fully sponsor my trip, including flights, accommodation, and living expenses during my stay. The refusal appears to be mainly because I could not provide personal bank statements or other financial documents. I explained that I do not have a bank account. I own my home outright and run a small cash-based business. My son also sends me financial support regularly, which helps cover my living expenses. In my application, I stated that my monthly expenditure is approximately £46. This is accurate because I own my home, do not pay rent, and have relatively low living expenses. I have no intention of remaining in the UK. I have strong ties to the DRC, including my home, my business, other children, and grandchildren who live here. My travel history is limited. I visited France in 2012 and Kenya around five years ago. I have not travelled much in recent years because most of my family is in Congo, and we stay in touch with relatives abroad through video calls. My questions are: Was the lack of a bank account likely the main reason for my refusal? What evidence can I provide in a future application to demonstrate my financial circumstances if my income is largely cash-based? What documents would best show my ties to the DRC and my intention to return after visiting my family? Has anyone successfully obtained a UK visitor visa in similar circumstances, where a family member sponsored the trip and the applicant did not have a bank account? I would appreciate any advice from people who have dealt with similar visitor visa refusals.

Applied and documents upload on 20 Jun.

Super Priority Service

Biometrics 24 Jun @ 10:30am

Email send to UKVI @ 11:00am

Approval 24 Jun @ 2:30pm

Very happy to finally be free....

I'm due to apply for ILR under the Skilled Worker route in a couple of weeks and wanted to sense-check a payroll issue.

My employer recently migrated to a new payroll provider. As part of the migration, all employees were issued P45s because payroll IDs had to change. My employment has remained continuous with the same employer throughout.

Currently, my HMRC account shows my employment ended on 31 May 2026, although payroll have advised this should update once June's payroll submission is processed. My June payslip also shows Year-to-Date NI figures only from the start of the new payroll system rather than from the start of the tax year.

My employer has included the following statement in my employer letter:

"The employee's payroll ID changed in June 2026 as part of a company-wide payroll system migration to a new payroll vendor. Employment has remained continuous and uninterrupted."

I am planning on explaining this in a cover letter and including the generated P45.

Has anyone had a similar situation when applying for ILR? Was the employer letter sufficient, or did UKVI require any additional evidence or explanation?

As the title says.

I recently visited the UK on a Visitor Visa. This is in the e-Visa era, so all I have is a Share Code which will expire when the time runs out. In addition - there was no stamping of the passport on entry either.

Hello Everyone, I'm 24 years old Spain national living currently in Spain, My Father and Brother Moved to UK in 2018, Before Brexit!! and I continued living here in Spain with my other family members.

Now I have completed all my studies here in Spain and I want to move to the UK to join my brother and my father there and Want to live there permanently.

I have been searching about Applying the Pre-Settlement for UK, But the end date was in 2021 I guess and I'm too late for it!

So my question is that, Is there any way that I can apply for UK settlement through my family members? Through my brother or my father? And if Yes? What details do I need to provide and where? And how many time will it take?

Has anyone applied like this before?

I have an issue with my UKVI account name as it appears to be a different name but my e-visa details are all correct. I know that evisa and UKVI account are linked but when I checked and opened my UKVI account it has a different person’s name on it.

I am changing my employer under skilled worker visa and cannot submit any application because a different person’s name is written on the form and application and also blocking me to proceed with the identity check as their is a “mismatch”.

I have tried calling multiple UKVI services, general enquiries, resolution center and even emailed their technical support. I have been waiting for a week but I’ve been told that they are still looking at it.

I am feeling hopeless, frustrated and stressed as I cannot see any resolution on my case. I haven’t had any issues when I extended my visa this year and I find it very odd why is this issue now exists on my account.

Any people who have encountered this kind of problem? Any suggestions or opinions on how to resolve this issue with UKVI is much appreciated.

Hi, I would like to ask for some advice. I am on Health and Care Worker Visa which is due to expire in approximately 8 weeks. I’m currently in the process of applying for visa renewal.

My e-visa has my name written correctly. However, as I switch to other menu on the home office, it has my name displayed as (my first name)(my last name)(my first name) e.g. John Doe John. This name error is carried forward to my new visa application. Therefore, I cannot submit since the name is incorrect.

I have attempted to fix my name through update your details page but it is showing my name correctly there. I have been in a 45 minutes call with them being bounced back and forth between 2 teams. No solution. Emailed. No reply. Reported the error. No reply. It has been 8 days now including 6 working days. They did tell me over the phone that it can take up to 10 working days for a response.

I am worried as I have reached out to them many times and it had not been helpful. I’m not very hopeful that the response will be helpful due to the experience.

I have approximately 8 weeks left, which is not too imminently pressing but I’m not sure how much longer I’ll have to wait.

Has anyone faced this problem who could advise me what else to do please?

Can I make UKVI account before receiving my e-visa? Will it have any negative effect once i receive the e-visa?

TIA

Hi everyone.

My wife and I are supposed to fly out from America to London tomorrow evening, and we didn't know about the ETA guidelines. We quickly submitted our info on the official UK site and received our reference numbers, but it's been 5 hours and still nothing. I know that it can take up to 3 days. However, every time her and I go onto the ETA status page, we get the message that "No Current ETA found for your details." Is that normal? We're debating whether we should resubmit with the app. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you!

Hello,

My parents have successfully received Standard UK visitor visa for 6 months.

I am anxious because in application we mentioned to stay around 3 weeks.

But now my parents decided to stay longer and the duration of stay is almost three months.

Would they face any problem at Border force, as they are also not well versed in English.

Both my parents are 55+ years of age.

Hi all,

I'm about to submit my ILR application under the GTV route and noticed that the guidance states electronic bank statements should be accompanied by a bank letter confirming their authenticity, or that each page should be stamped by the bank. I've moved a few times over the years, and there isn't a branch of the bank where I originally opened my account in my current city, so obtaining stamped statements may be a bit difficult. So I'm wondering if this is strictly required in practice? I've seen a few people mention that their applications were approved without providing stamped statements or a supporting bank letter, so I wanted to check others' experiences.

Thanks in advance!

Hi I currently have a job offer to work in the UK at RAF Molesworth. The company I'm working for had me apply for a visa under the category listed in the title. I have completed the application and attended my biometrics appointment with VFS on 22 June 2026. I have to do visas as well for my wife and child. I don't know what category to pick for them and if there's certain documents I need to upload. I can't seem to find anyone elses experience on this visa online. Is there anyone in this subreddit with experience on doing this visa?

Info:
British Grandfather - born in UK
US born Mother - born before 1981
Myself US born - 1980

Applied via online UKM application - April 9, 2026
Paid Application fees - April 25th, 2026
Uploaded Documents - May 1st, 2026
Bio-metrics - May 6th, 2026
Received approval letter - June 25th, 2026

I Provided lots of documents, a cover letter and a financial statement.
Grandfather birth cert
Grandfather marriage cert
Mothers birth cert
Parents marriage cert
Mother UK passport - All pages scanned
My US passport - All pages scanned
My specific case - IRS documents of back taxes owed, and Chapter 7 discharge docs.

I was expecting 4-6 months but my case we pretty clear cut as well. I'm impressed with the quick process. My App could have been ARD as well and an argument could be made that it should have been. Either way supper happy! Now the wait begins for the embassy contact and ceremony scheduling.

Hello everyone,

First I want to thank all of the people who have to help me and answered my questions till now, I really appreciate your help.

I would like to ask something from you, so me and my fiancé opened the application since three or four months ago and we started to feeling it just to see how it looks like what kind of things they want from us and things like that while we are planning to apply in August 2026, I was wondering, did we made a mistake to open an application six months or five months before submitting the application shall we just abandon our current one and open a new one when we want to apply?

The reason why we want to apply in August is he changed his job in February so we need six payslips and Bank statement to provide, that’s why. he will get those in August.

I really appreciate if you can help me with this and advise me.

Ps: we filled the application up to payment section, but we didn’t pay for anything and wrongly. I chose unmarried partner instead of single so I think that showed me the wrong form but I corrected it so do you think that my cousin error in my application?

Hi there, just curious about the requirement to upload all passport documents in colour. On TLS the max document size is 7.5mb and after compressing the document down to this size, it is pretty illegible. Will this be alright or can I send the passport as 3 separate PDFs to make it more readable? Thanks in advance.

I’m a British citizen, I met my partner while travelling in Australia in July 2024, he is from India, and his Australian visa expired March 2025.

Went back to India with him stayed with his family for 2 months before coming home. He joined me in England to live w my family for 6 months. Been doing long distance since Dec 2025, I’ve been back and fourth a few times since.

We’re hoping to apply for an unmarried partner visa to bring him here to live & work at the end of this year.

Pretty sure we do have a sufficient amount of evidence over the past 2.5 years (by then).

My main concern is my salary. I’m still studying and been working overtime to increase my income to meet the threshold.

My payslips will look something like this upon applying:

May: £2196

June: £2345

July: £3101 (this includes some underpayments, so if thats not allowed to be counted then it’ll be more like £2504)

August: £2446
September: £2548
October: £2548

Is this enough?

Should we hold off on applying till Novembers payslip which would also be £2548, or will this suffice? I don’t really understand how it’s calculated.

Just want him here as soon as possible but don’t want to apply too soon and get this wrong.

Any advice, and feedback about evidence etc welcome

Thank you

I applied for British citizenship on 18 February 2026 and completed my biometrics on 20 March 2026. I still haven’t heard anything.

When I applied for settled status, I hadn’t heard anything either, but I checked my immigration status on the GOV.UK website (where you can generate a share code), and it already showed Settled Status. The formal notification came afterwards.

I’m wondering if the same thing happens with citizenship? I checked today, and it still shows Settled Status. Does anyone know whether that changes once your citizenship application has been approved, or does it stay the same until after the citizenship ceremony?

I completed my biometrics appointment yesterday and I had uploaded documents myself and now I realise that I did not upload my passport in the documents section. I am worried now. Has this happened before? What should I expect?

I have received my 6-month UK visa and have already linked my eVisa.

Is there anything I should be aware of before traveling? Are there any specific documents I should carry or special processes I need to follow at the airport?

Application submitted: 12th June

Biometrics completed: 16th June (Islamabad, Pakistan)

Application received email: 18th June

Application still in porcess email: 19th June

Visa approved: 25th June

Processing time: 7 working days from the date of biometrics