Things To Know Before You Go

National Insurance Number

June 24, 2018


Here are some cherry blossom trees.



We are going to need them.




What is a National Insurance Number?

Good question. 

I don’t know that we really have the equivalent in Australia. Of course, we may, and it might just be one of those things that happened automatically so I’ve never had to be aware of it, but still. I think it’s probably more like a Social Security number in the US, but don’t quote me. Contributions to National Insurance appear to go towards pension and maternity leave, things like that.
Long story short – you need to get one.

You will need a National Insurance (NI) number to register for most employment accounting, such as self-employed or Limited Company set up. You do not need a NI number in order to start work, which is just as well, because, as you’ll see below, it can take a while to get it sorted…

Here is what will happen when you try to set up a national insurance number;

1.    Being a member of Generation Google, you will probably search online for what to do, which will turn up https://www.gov.uk/apply-national-insurance-number
2.    From here, you will call the listed number - 0800 141 2075 - go through the menu items, and be placed on hold
3.    You will continue to hold for anywhere from 15 minutes to nearly an hour (my personal record)
4.    Once you do speak to someone, they will ask you why you are applying for a NI number, and ask you to provide information such as your full name, your passport and visa details, and your current and/or mailing address.
5.    You will be given a reference number - WRITE THIS DOWN - and told that the application pack will be sent out in 7-10 working days.
6.    You will also be given a number to call if the pack doesn’t arrive within the given timeframe.
a.     If this is a 03456 number - this number is no longer in use, even though it’s apparently sometimes still given out
b.    If this is 0800 141 2079 - this number didn’t work for me on multiple occasions: it spontaneously hung itself up before I was able to make any choices or speak to anyone
c.     NB: if your pack doesn’t arrive, my advice is to call the same number that you did the first time and beg for help from the people there. Chances are they’re the only ones you’ll be able to get into contact with anyway.
d.    NB to the NB: if your pack STILL doesn’t arrive, you call back yet again, find out that an internal error was made and it was never sent in the first place, and have them send it to your new address, because by now you have actually sorted yourself out enough to move.
7.    You need to complete the application and send it back as soon as possible, as it can take up to 6 weeks for a NI number to be issued. 
a.     NB: it has been reported that some banks may accept the cover letter of your NI application pack as proof of address. The author has yet to see this in action. Most banks ask for a completed letter including your allocated NI number.
8.    You may need to go in for an interview to get your NI number sorted. In which case, they should contact you to set something up. I didn’t end up needing to, I just received a letter with my number a few weeks after I sent in the completed pack.


Whew! And another one bites the dust! How are we feeling? Everyone okay? Hang in, we’re nearly at the end, guys. We can do it!

Things To Know Before You Go

Biometric Residence Permit

June 24, 2018

Finally! An easy one!

Getting your Biometric Residence Permit sorted out is definitely one of the easiest steps on this list. All you need is your passport with its visa vignette and the letter that came with your completed visa application. 
When you submitted your visa application, it would have given you a choice of places to get your BRP – probably post offices close to where you said you’d be staying on arrival to the UK. Your chosen location should be on the letter that arrived with your completed visa.
You will need to go to that location before your vignette expires or within 10 days of arriving in the UK, whichever is later. I would get this one sorted ASAP, both because it’s easy and because your BRP is essential if you want to do any international travel (or, you know, remain in the country you actually applied for a visa for, but international travel as well).
Give yourself plenty of time for collection, because your post office could be dead quiet or the bustling centre of the universe depending on the day. And once you’ve got your card, please, whatever you do, don’t lose it! You will need your BRP along with your passport if you’re planning to do any international travel – give them both to the border agents on leaving/returning. Some (if not most) workplaces will require you to at least present your BRP in order to work there. And, again, it’s another piece of documentation that gives you a footprint – one more step away from being a ghost. 


Things To Know Before You Go

Bank Account and/or Access to Money

May 14, 2018

You’ve spent all this money on your visa and registration and flights and who knows what else, but if you do (hopefully) have any left over, this is the time to think about where to put it. 
Some options are;
1.    See if you can open a bank account before you leave home. Some banks have international branches, or agreements with other banks overseas. Best plan? Go to your bank in plenty of time before you’re due to leave and make an appointment to talk about what they can offer you.
2.    Open a bank account when you arrive in the UK. Get your documentation in place as soon as possible, even before you leave if you can, and rock up to a branch once you dump your gear.
a.     As of March-May 2018 HSBC will accept a passport as proof of ID, and a letter from an employer on company letterhead stating your full name, address, and job title as proof of address. They will, of course, accept the normal proofs of address (mobile phone plan bills, utility bills, etc) but an employer letter can be easier to come by at times.
b.     Another option for proof of address is changing your address to a UK address (if you know where you’re going to be living/have friends who don’t mind/have cleared it with your AirBnB host/etc) on your Australian bank details, then going to your bank and getting them to print a copy of your statement in branch with your UK address on the statement. Some banks will accept this as proof of address, even though it’s from an Australian bank.
c.     If you register with a GP once you’re in the UK (it’s free!) you can use that as proof of address for some banks.

NB: you will also need to think about money for before you get a UK bank account, which we will talk about at the end of this post.

Opening a bank account in the UK used to be a doddle, or close enough to a doddle that you could still call it one. Apparently, however, they now have concerns that have made it rather less of a doddle (Brexit? What Brexit?). If you read on forums about ‘this or that bank allows you to open an account with just a passport!!1!’ smile fondly as you reminisce about the good old days and then sigh as you close the tab.

Or, in my case, read the blog posts that recommend ‘get your new housemates to put your name on one of the bills in your new rental place and use that as proof of address’ and resolve to wait for that. 
Then a lovely rental property becomes available, and then you apply, and then you find out that you’re required by the agency to have a bank account. 
So you try whatever you can, go to every bank, and every one of them asks for a bill (which you don’t have), a rental agreement (which you wish you had), or a national insurance letter (which, as mentioned already, is not the quickest thing in the world to bring into realisation).
So you go home, have a bit of a cry, make yourself a cup of tea, and write a blog post. 
Well, it’s cheaper than therapy, at least.

I did eventually end up getting an account with HSBC, somewhat later than was strictly necessary. Why later? Well, in true Kelsey fashion, I botched it a bit.
I’m sure you’re all used to hearing that by now.

To explain, let’s go back – I worked in the UK as a Gap Year Student at a lovely school when I was 18. I had an account with HSBC at that point, and while I was pretty sure that it had been closed, I thought it couldn’t hurt to go in and check if there was still a record of me in the system. There was, but the account had been closed a long time ago and they weren’t going to just open it again. So I left it at that.

And for some reason, I didn’t go back to HSBC. I don’t know why. I think maybe I just assumed that I couldn’t open an account there again? I don’t know why, don’t ask. 

Anyway, I tried most of the other major banks with varying bits of identification. Lloyds told me that if my employer wrote a letter on company letterhead confirming my address, I could open an account. Well, one person at Lloyd’s told me that. The next person took one look at the letter from my employer and said, no, you MUST have a National Insurance number. The person I spoke to on me third trip to Lloyds was downright rude.

Such a shame. They have an excellent TV ad with lovely horses, but they might want to spend some of that ad money on social skills training…

Some weeks later, after Santander (next available appointment to open an account would be in a month), Lloyds (rude), Natwest (nope), Barclays (nopenope), etc, etc, I headed back to HSBC. Actually, my dear friend Steph asked why I hadn’t tried them again, and I realised I had completely written them off for no reason. And it really was no reason.

They were lovely.

More specifically, the lady who set up my account was lovely. I didn’t have the letter from my employer with me at the time, so she booked me an appointment for the next day and walked me through the whole process with kindness and calm. She explained absolutely everything and made sure I knew exactly what I was signing. It was a very un-bank-like experience.

Clearly, HSBC is my pick, just for ease of setting up and customer service. You can always switch once you’ve settled a bit more, but getting a UK bank account gives you a bit of a foot in the door, so to speak. Beyond a bit of financial security, it also means that you exist, to put it bluntly. For the first few weeks when you move to a new place, you don’t exist. There’s too few records of you, your footprints are too light. You may as well be a ghost.
A bank account gives you something closer to corporeal form.

In regards to money while you’re waiting for a bank account, there are also a few options;
1.    Cash. The old favourite. If you’re looking to exchange a large amount of cash, don’t leave it to the last minute. The pound isn’t an uncommon currency, but the last thing you want to do is have to go to the dodgy place with the terrible exchange rate because everyone else is out of sterling.
2.    Travel cards. Because I used to fly with Qantas for work, I ended up using my Qantas frequent flyer card for a long time when I first arrived in the UK. The exchange rate isn’t the best, and I probably could’ve found something better if I’d sat down and searched, but it was convenient and, as we know, I have a tendency to botch things, so at least I had something! There are all kinds of travel cards these days, so you should only need to do a little bit of research to find something decent.
3.    Credit cards. You can, of course, use your credit card overseas. But, outside of an emergency, why would you? It’s pretty much like holding up a sign to your bank and saying, please, rob me blind, I’m begging you.
Emergencies only, people.

Even though, as I said, the exchange rate probably isn’t the greatest, I don’t really have any complaints about the Qantas card. You can get one even if you’re not a frequent flyer. I never had a problem with it, as far as I can remember, and while not flash, it did what it said on the box. It let me use my money overseas with very little hassle, and I can’t ask any more of it. Oh, and you can use it as a contactless card on the tube too, from memory. Not too shabby.




Feeling overwhelmed yet? Don’t. We’ll get there, I promise. For all your hard work and to sustain your mental health, here’s some birdies!







Things To Know Before You Go

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.


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!






They're so impressed with you!!