KM2017

Hi all, my Husband (British Citizen) and I are gearing up to submit our spouse settlement application for me (Australian) to join him in the UK. In June (before our wedding) we consulted with a lawyer in the UK who told us that most applications were being processed in 10-15 days, and that it wasn't worth paying for priority because all applications were being processed quite quickly. This is obviously not the case, and the processing times are far longer than we anticipated.

I was wondering if anyone had any advice or experience with regards to the differences in processing times between different application centres in the same country?

There is no biometric centre in the city I live in so I have to choose which of the Australian locations I'll use. The Gov.Uk website says that in Brisbane is 100% of applications are processed within 60 days, whereas Canberra, Melbourne, and Sydney all say 100% in 90 days.

Adelaide, interestingly, claims to process 100% of applications in 30 days. I can't seem to find an answer for why this might be, but if it is the case I'd rather use this location.

Adelaide does follow a different process as they don't have a VFS centre. You apply at the Dept. of Immigration and then post your application (with return envelope) to a PO Box address for 'UK Visas and Immigration' Sydney. You do have the option of paying for the VFS scanning service and sending the documents + receipt to the same address. It doesn't give any additional information about where the applications is actually processed from here, or why the applicant isn't required to send it to Sheffield like applicants from every other location.

I also wondered if anyone had any experience in submitting applications and retaining your passport?

Thanks in advance!

BritInParis

All the processing times are screwed up at the moment thanks to the repatriation of settlement visas to Sheffield without enough staff to process them. You are likely to find that the processing times between VFS centres in Australia will not differ by much more than a week.

Missl73

My husband and I have just been through the process from Australia (our visa arrived Friday just gone). We applied from Melbourne and for us it took 33 working days priority paid (and priority is supposed to take no longer than 15 working days) this is common situation for most if you read the threads on this forum. I have another colleague who applied 2 weeks before us, also priority from Melbourne, and they got their visa the same week we did so theirs was in the 40 day range.

As BritInParis says, all the processing times are taking much longer than normal at the moment so if time is of the essence I would still recommend paying priority because if not it will take even longer - that said it is a lot of money so if you are ok to wait 60 - 90 days then it may not be worth it.

Good luck

KM2017

Hi Missl73, thanks so much for sharing this.

Time is definitely of the essence and we're definitely going to pay for priority - it's comforting to know that some applications are going through in <40 days! I saw on another post of yours that you had yours formally escalated - was that a relatively straightforward process?

KM2017

Hi BritInParis, thanks so much for the reply. Do you think that the difference between Adelaide and the other capital cities may be false then? The Adelaide appointment location is not a VSF centre, it's at the Australian Dept of Immigration and Border Protection.

The other key difference is that unlike the other cities (VFS centres) where they say x% processed in 10 days, x% processed in 15 days, x% processed in 30 days etc. Adelaide just says 100% processed in 30 days. (This is for decisions made in May). Perhaps I'm just reading far too much into this.

BritInParis

I think you probably are. It's likely that Adelaide receives fewer applications than Melbourne or Sydney (hence why it's run by DIBP and not VFS) and therefore it doesn't have the numbers that would produce a more elongated processing timeline.

Missl73

It was pretty straight forward, but others on the forum have found they couldn't escalate before 60 days so I'm not sure why we could when others couldn't... Their communication was pretty poor, when our decision was made I only found out because I contacted them to follow up. It's a pretty frustrating process but we appear to have been quite lucky.