Please could someone advise me re the application form section regarding work experience. It requires notarised employment contracts from present and past employers. Andy has been a self employed electrical subcontractor since 1983 and had no employers or employment contracts so what should he do? Do you think a letter from his accountant would help? And should this be notarised too? Or is there anything else we should do?

We have an appointment with a Notary on Friday and it will cost £180 per hour - an absolute bargain I thought!!! any suggestions/advice before then would be so appreciated.
Cheers

How about reference letters fron happy customers? Larger contract specs and such? He'll need something to prove his employment status, that's all.

I am a contractor and in the same position, except that I have contracts. I got references from all of my previous clients.

Any documerntation that will prove that he has worked for his clients should be ok.

Also, don't waste your money on a notary, it isn't needed (according to CHC London).

My husband was the same. We contacted immigration and they said that Tax Returns were sufficient evidence of self employment. Also invoices from clients.
Hope this helps.

according to the application information we need a notarised declaration stating that his children are not coming with us and will apply in their own right should they decide to later? Just thought Id Kill 2 birds etc. unless anyone has experience of not doing this in their application.
Thanks for all replies - gratefully received

It also states that you need notarised employment contracts, but when I spoke to the CHC Representative at the Emigrate show in Sandown, she said that it wasn't necessary for UK English documents.

I'm not sure why you should need a notarised declaration, as a notary just confirms that a copy is a certified copy of an original document.

Perhaps you should check with CHC before spending any money.

How young are the children? This is a minefield if they are young; CIC can (and do) refuse applications if they feel that the children of a previous relationship are likely to be financially disadvantaged by your husband leaving...if a child support claim against him in Canada is a possibility...if the ex partner lodges an objection :scared: etc. etc. If the kids are young, search my previous posts back to 2003 and you will get some relevant information from other posters on the same threads.

hello
my husband and principal applicant is a self employed builder here in the uk.
when we applied (see sig for timeline) we put in the relevant boxes that from 1992 ( if memory serves well ) till present date he has been self employed as builder /contractor. i then on a separate piece of paper wrote about a side and a half about what jon does and the kind of work experience he has etc.
this was all submitted and we heard nothing more until our medical requests and the request for additional info. they initially asked for a resume so i tenatatively contacted them by email (london) and they said terribly sorry a resume wouldnt be easy to write thus the following would suffice;

reference letters from previous clients
and/or copies of contracts and quotes ( we had none of these)
copies of previous tax returns to prove that you have been self employed consistently and to eveidence your work experience i suppose. we had photocopies of the last 10 years or so so we just sent all we had as we didnt know just how much they wanted

that was all we sent with our additional info also sent a photocopy of jons csi card

i hope this has been of some help

we found that chc london didnt respond to any faxes prior to application and aor but once we were in the sytem they were happy to reply to emails.
my experience in filling out the forms are that if in doubt then put all additional info that you think is relevant that cant fit into a box on a separate sheet of paper. if they require further info believe you me they will ask for it.

good luck
oh teaching you to suck eggs and all that ....photocopy everything before you send it off...fingr prints the works everything ...thingsdo go astray as we found out.

son aged 22, daughter aged 13.5 - daughter lives with mum and step dad - has no wish to join us! Worked out she would be around 16.5years old when we get visa if all goes well. He would still pay her allowance etc. until required. She would not be financially disadvantagedat all.
Thanks for your reply

We had own business when we applied (so we were technically self-employed).

Our agent just asked us for a letter from ourselves stating what we did, and got a couple of references from a few good clients - we didn't even tell them why we needed them (obviously we didn't want them to know we were clearing off to Canada!) Our accountant gave us a reference and I think we sent a few years' worth of accounts. CHC were quite happy with that!