UK Visa

March 26, 2018

Now that the HCPC malarkey is out of the way, or if you’re not a healthcare practitioner and didn’t need to go through it in the first place (lucky you), it’s time to move on to the Visa.

You have a couple of options here. Most common, as far as I can tell, is the Tier 5 Youth Mobility Visa, allowing you to stay and work in the UK for 2 years.

Of course, there are other options – an Ancestry Visa extends that to 5 years, and if you can apply for a British passport that may end up being the better option for long term relocation.

As neither of those options were available to me (apparently, my family couldn’t wait to get to Australia and came as soon as they had a chance…), I’m not going to cover them here.

So we will be looking at the Youth Mobility Visa today, class.

First thing’s first – this process is unnecessarily complicated, but regard that as a primer for life in the UK. It’s a pretty good indication of how things are going to go when you get over here.

What I mean by this is that the Government portion of your Visa application is actually pretty straightforward. As long as you have all your information in front of you and you have some time and you’re not expecting something back immediately, you’ll be fine.

The difficulty with the visa process, at least in applying from Australia, is that the UK Government has outsourced. Wouldn’t you know it? And that’s where things get tricky.

But we’ll come to that in time.

Just a note, my ducks – please, please, please read to the end of this post before beginning your application, if you haven’t already. It won’t take that long and it could save you some serious trouble.

First step for your visa application is to visit the website. The application for the visa is done online, and it’s not all that complicated. You set up an account online, complete the application, and that’s about it.

Things to remember when completing the application;
- You can’t apply more than 6 months before you intend to travel to the UK
- You may need access to old passports in order to log past travel dates
- You should complete the visa application and biometric appointment booking on a Windows desktop computer in Google Chrome if at all possible (more on this later)
- There is an associated cost for biometric appointments in Brisbane, Canberra, and Perth. Appointments in Melbourne and Sydney don’t have a cost
- You will need to collect your biometric residence permit (ID card) within 10 days of the arrival date that you put in the application, so probably best to nail down an arrival date before you actually apply.
If you don’t, the temporary vignette in your passport will expire and you’ll have to apply for a new one, which is a headache you just don’t need

And speaking of headaches, welcome to the first of many.

VFS Global.

Ooh, golly. Here we go, boys and girls.

Now, in the interests of transparency, let me make it abundantly clear that a decent percentage of my difficulty in the visa sphere was due to my own error, whether that was not understanding something completely or jumping in before I’d stopped to research as much as I should have. I mean, that’s one of the main reasons I’m doing this, right? So that other people don’t have to make the same mistakes as me.

(yes I know there’s a lot of mistakes and I leap before I look sometimes and I don’t read things properly and I kind of suck at organising and planning and just life in general some days but I’m working on it okay?!)

But in my defence, VFS Global is a slippery little sucker of the same calibre as that one last grape that kid couldn’t get out of his bowl in that old ad. There was/is very little information available online in terms of trouble-shooting if something goes wrong. From looking them up for this post, they seem to have overhauled their website, so whether that helps or not I can’t say. I have no inclination to trust them, just personally, but your mileage may vary.

The story of my visa went like this – I started the application while away on a work trip, so at the kitchen table in a little house on Mornington Island up in the Gulf of Carpentaria, with my occupational therapist and psychologist teammates offering moral support and tea as I got progressively more frustrated.
I then realised I didn’t have all the information (important!) and decided to wait until I got home to get it all. For some reason I decided I had to go pick up my passport immediately upon returning home, so I arrived in Brisbane at like 10:30pm, got home from the airport, drove to my parents’ house, cried at their kitchen table because I was so tired and overwhelmed, grabbed my passport, and went home to bed. And then realised I didn’t need it straight away anyway.
I then took the first sensible step of this whole process and sat down with my mother to complete the application.

Then, application done, I booked a biometric appointment. I’m pretty sure I also did this on Mornington Island? Maybe? In any case, I booked it for a few days after I returned to Brisbane and figured that was that.

Except that I had forgotten about Switzerland.

Last year, one of my best friends got married in Switzerland. I couldn’t blame her – she’s Swiss, after all. But I had booked to go over for four days for the wedding. Which was pretty close to when I’d booked my biometric appointment. And I didn’t know how long they were going to have my passport, but I did know there was no way I was getting to Switzerland without it.

So I cancelled my appointment. Or so I thought.

You see, when I tried to cancel the appointment online, it wouldn’t let me. No error message came up, just that when I clicked on the ‘cancel’ button, the cursor jumped to another part of the page and nothing happened. So I tried to book another appointment. But I couldn’t, at least, not in Brisbane, because it’s a fee paying centre. At least, that’s what I thought the problem was at the time. There was no national number that I could call for assistance, only an international one that had a huge cost and I couldn’t call from my mobile at that point anyway. Sending an email cost money too, and when I did buckle and write to them, I was told to use Chrome as a browser and everything would be fine.

It didn’t make any difference.

Okay, I thought, I’ll book an appointment in Melbourne, a fee-free centre. My brother lives down there, I can make a trip of it. In fact, my mum and I organised to go down together for weekend. It was all going to be great.

When I walked into my appointment in Melbourne, the lady processing my application took too long. Way too long. Something was wrong. That ‘something’ was that my application was still registered to Brisbane, and they couldn’t process it in Melbourne. I explained that I had tried to book another appointment in Brisbane and couldn’t, had tried to cancel the application and couldn’t, and could they suggest what to do now?

They said the only solution was to cancel the application, do a new application, and apply for a refund of the money. Bearing in mind that by this point I had paid the visa registration fee, the international health surcharge, and the appointment fee for Brisbane. So I was going to have to pay them all again and just hope that they refunded my money from the first time?

Leaving the appointment, I called my mum, just about in hysterics, and we went back to the hotel to figure out what to do next. When I couldn't change anything on my iPad, just like I’d tried previously, we eventually called the very expensive hotline. They were the ones who gave us this super important tidbit:

You can only cancel or change your biometric appointment from a Windows desktop computer using Google Chrome. It will not work from a Mac or Macbook. I don’t know why this is, and neither did the man from VFS that we eventually got a hold of on the phone, but it is what it is.

I was incredibly blessed that my dad’s office has a branch in Melbourne, so we were able to go in and use their computers and printer, and I could book another appointment at the Melbourne VFS offices for the next day. Bless those lovely engineers who were so kind to a hysterical speechie and a frazzled teacher!

Eventually, the visa fee and the healthcare surcharge were both refunded to me, but not the biometric appointment fee for my original Brisbane appointment, which was the only cost that had gone to VFS Global. That fee was about $90, so it was nothing to sneeze at, but by then I was so happy to be done with the whole sad mess that I didn’t even care.

Pretty much what should happen is that you complete your application on the UK government website, you go to VFS Global, you choose your centre and appointment time, turn up, turn over your passport and get photographed, and everything is fine.

Take care to read the website information carefully re: what you need to bring on the day. For the Brisbane centre, I believe that you actually can’t take things like bags or phones in with you, although there may be lockers available inside? In any case, maybe try to take in as few personal effects as possible.

There are a bunch of additional services you can pay for along with the application, whether beforehand or at the centre, such as SMS updates, courier of your passport once a decision has been made, etc.

I paid to have my passport couriered back to me, seeing as I was applying in Melbourne but living in Brisbane, but you could also pick up your passport from the application centre. I didn’t think that the SMS updates were necessary, seeing as the turn around time is actually quite quick. But, as I say to my little cousins, you do you boo!

It does look like VFS Global has their act together a little bit more, but I still can’t find any real contact information on their website, which bothers me. There is a way to send ‘compliments’ directly to them, but if you want to send ‘complaints’ they direct you back to the UK government website. Passing the buck much, guys?

I eventually found addresses and numbers on forums for disgruntled people who were also having issues with their services. When I was doing my application, that seemed like the quickest way to get a response – post on a forum that they monitor, complain loudly, and wait for them to respond with a number you could call. Which is a very dodgy way to do customer service, if you ask me.

If you do run into trouble, try communication@vfsglobal.com. You may also be able to get a phone number through that address, but be warned, it will cost you an arm and a leg! So if for some reason you do need to call, have all your questions in front of you and be ready to go to keep the call as short as possible.

Sorry that this was so cranky. This part of the process was stressful for me, but it doesn’t have to be for you, and it’s blessedly short compared to some other things (shakes fist at the HCPC).

But that’s one more thing down, and one step closer to the adventure!

Now here are some cute animals to reward you for your hard work!