Neil

I recieved a letter from Adelaide requesting me to go and get medicals and police
checks done. Problem is they only give 49 days from them posting me the letter.
That equates to exactly 7 weeks. The letter has taken one week to get here which
means when I post mine back that will take a week also. That gives me 5 weeks to get
police records and medicals completed. After going to my local police station they
told me they dont provide form s21. I have to write to Data Protection, Police
Headquarters in Winchester (Winchester because I live in Hampshire I presume).
Directory enquires gave me their telephone number, I phoned. Data Protection tell me
that they will post me the form, I then fill it in and take it to the local police
station with passport and driving licence as ID and £10 per applicant. The police
station then send it to Data Protection in Winchester, who then send it to New
Scotland Yard who then send it back to Winchester and then onto me. Phew. That s21
is going to be dog eared when I get it back. Its also looking like xmas before I
even get it and Adelaide want it by October 9th. If they dont then it says on the
letter Adelaide sent me that they may make the decision that I/we do not meet the
health and/or character requirements for migration to Australia. I.E. no visa. The
lady I spoke to at Police Headquarters says it takes about 4 to 6 weeks to process
the police checks. Is this a problem with Hampshire (in UK) or a nationwide problem
and has anyone had problems getting their visa? Its obvious I wont get the police
records out to Australia in time so should I send all the other requested documents
out there as soon as they are ready, and then send the police records out when I
finally get them? Just imagine If I had gone on holiday for 2 or 3 weeks the day
before I recieved the letter, I would have only had 2 or 3 weeks to sort it. Any
advice/comfort gratefully recieved. If you live In Hampshire, BEWARE.

Neil

P.S. Medicals are proving equally difficult. That will be posted later as I have got
to go to work now.

kernowjmh23

Neil hi.
This was something I worried over, too - would the police checks be back in time to get them off to Adelaide with the required timescale. In fact the police check or in fact, more accurately, my National Identification Service Person Record was received 4 weeks and one day after I sent it and hopefully is now in Adelaide (posted last saturday) and my 49 days are up on 9th September.
My contingency plan was to send (after photocopying) the receipt I had from Devon & Cornwall Constabulary to say I had submitted my request from New Scotalnd Yard along with my Form 80 which I figured would have covered me until the 'police check' had come through...
Hope this might be useful
Jon

Diane

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Neil:

We also had difficulty metting the timescales. Our agent sent an email to Adelaide advising them of this. I know our police checks didn't come till after the 49 days and we have got our visas so if you let them know your situation it should be okay.

good luck
Diane

kango_jack

Neil
Like you say it can be a real nightmare with the timing.
We advised Adelaide that we would be on holiday in Brisbane for 3 weeks from the beginning of May, however we anticipated that the request for the medicals and police checks would also be around this time.
Fortunatly we requested our police checks before we went and booked our medicals for 2 weeks after we returned.
DIMA (bless their cotton socks ) sent us the request, which arrived the first day we arrived in Australia - had we not anticipated this it would have been impossible to meet the deadline.
We would suggest that you submit the paperwork as you recieve it, hopefully the police forms will be completed in time as ours only took just under a month. The medical was quite hard for us to book (in Bournemouth), it might be worth ringing round and travelling to someone who can fit you in.
Also with the medical you need to allow a week after the medical for the HIV test results.
We were lucky and managed to get all our paperwork in 2 days before the due date - lots of frantic watching of the DHL web-site to see when it arrived.
Best of luck and try not to panic!!

mozz48

.
We were lucky and managed to get all our paperwork in 2 days before the due date - lots of frantic watching of the DHL web-site to see when it arrived.
Best of luck and try not to panic!! [/QUOTE]

Good to see someone using DHL as a courier service Takes a lot of worry off your mind when you send documents containing all the details of your life to another country Expensive , Yes < But well worth the exercise It can also take many precious days off the time it takes to get there
Good Luck Gerard

Don

Sorry Neil, no sympathy with you at all. I know DIMIA advice is to wait for them to ask you before you get police record and medicals but this is poor advice re: police record. You wouldn't be worrying now if you had organized the latter ahead of time. It's not exactly expensive or time consuming to do and the police record valid for a year. So you could afford to do a fresh one every, say, 6 months to give yourself plenty of flexibility and no anxiety.

Cheers - Don

Joe Fish

My letter said I had to apply within 49 days. I was ready to send of the reciept from
the police - but they did actually arrive in time.

mcaprio

Hi,
Did you try to call immigration officers in Adelaide and ask an additional delay? I did it myself once because I couldn't send some documents before the deadline and they gave me 2 week more without any difficulty...

Myriam

Nathan Pye

This isn't just a problem with Hampshire - I work for Leicestershire Police, and the
procedure is the same for me as it is everybody else - No employment shortcuts here.
The farce comes when you know exactly what it is that they will send you and the fact
that it still takes ages. They quoted me 7 weeks today from submission of forms etc.
Apparently they have been innundated by requests following the abduction of the two
girls in the UK last month, so it could get much worse.

I reccommend that people get their police checks as soon as possible after they lodge
their application to avoid the rush.

Nathan.

[email protected] (Neil) wrote in message
news:<[email protected]. com>...
    > I recieved a letter from Adelaide requesting me to go and get medicals and police
    > checks done. Problem is they only give 49 days from them posting me the letter.
    > That equates to exactly 7 weeks. The letter has taken one week to get here which
    > means when I post mine back that will take a week also. That gives me 5 weeks to
    > get police records and medicals completed. After going to my local police station
    > they told me they dont provide form s21. I have to write to Data Protection,
    > Police Headquarters in Winchester (Winchester because I live in Hampshire I
    > presume). Directory enquires gave me their telephone number, I phoned. Data
    > Protection tell me that they will post me the form, I then fill it in and take it
    > to the local police station with passport and driving licence as ID and £10 per
    > applicant. The police station then send it to Data Protection in Winchester, who
    > then send it to New Scotland Yard who then send it back to Winchester and then onto
    > me. Phew. That s21 is going to be dog eared when I get it back. Its also looking
    > like xmas before I even get it and Adelaide want it by October 9th. If they dont
    > then it says on the letter Adelaide sent me that they may make the decision that
    > I/we do not meet the health and/or character requirements for migration to
    > Australia. I.E. no visa. The lady I spoke to at Police Headquarters says it takes
    > about 4 to 6 weeks to process the police checks. Is this a problem with Hampshire
    > (in UK) or a nationwide problem and has anyone had problems getting their visa?
    > Its obvious I wont get the police records out to Australia in time so should I send
    > all the other requested documents out there as soon as they are ready, and then
    > send the police records out when I finally get them? Just imagine If I had gone on
    > holiday for 2 or 3 weeks the day before I recieved the letter, I would have only
    > had 2 or 3 weeks to sort it. Any advice/comfort gratefully recieved. If you live In
    > Hampshire, BEWARE.
    > Neil
    > P.S. Medicals are proving equally difficult. That will be posted later as I have
    > got to go to work now.

Neil

Thanks to everyone who offered their advice and experience.

In reply to Don and Nathan though, I would like to point out that getting your police
checks done early is not necessarily a smart thing to do. I believe that the final
entry date(the last date to validate your visa) on your visa is dependant on when you
get your police checks done. So if like Don says you got your police checks done
every six months then you could submit a check that is 6 months old. Then by the time
you get your visa 3 months later after submission you will only have 3 months to
enter Australia and validate. Thats OK if you can drop everything and just go at the
drop of a hat. Thats not an option for me for a number of reasons and is probably
the same for a lot of other people also. Note I did say I "believe" this is the case
with final entry date being dependant on when police checks are done. Can anyone
confirm this?

Thanks again,

Neil

Juls

Neil,

Your right about the timing waiting for DIMIA to tell you to get the checks. But we've worked it out hopefully and we think we'll still have several months on our police checks and medicals.
By the way our police checks took just over 40 days, but like the other guy said there may be a backlog with what's happened to the Soham girls. Some schools were not opening because new staff had'nt been cleared.
So my advise would be to anyone is get them done ASAP as you say they only cost £10 not like the medical costs, so if there was'nt much time left on them you could always renew them.

Julie
(Adelaide by April 2003)

Don

OK Neil, valid point, I retract a bit my directness, sorry. But maybe for a tenner a time, police check renewal every 3 months wouldn't exactly be breaking the bank and would get around the delay issue.

Cheers - Don

Daves

I can attest to this not being the 'smartest' move I made when filing my application.
I've recently received my Pre-Visa Grant letter with an entry date of 23rd October !
Something of a shock since we (my wife and I) were hoping for a few months to settle
our UK things. I thought I was doing the right thing to front-load the application
with medicals/police checks but it's the 12 month validity of the police checks that
has put us in this predicament. ie. they were issued on 23rd Oct 2001.

I've applied for a new police check in the hope of extending the entry date but
with the police trying to process 25000 teachers reports immediately there might be
a significant delay which could take me over the 30days I have to respond to the
Grant advice.

dave


"Neil" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected] om...
    > Thanks to everyone who offered their advice and experience.
    > In reply to Don and Nathan though, I would like to point out that getting your
    > police checks done early is not necessarily a smart thing to do. I believe that
    > the final entry date(the last date to validate your visa) on your visa is dependant
    > on when you get your police checks done. So if like Don says you got your police
    > checks done every six months then you could submit a check that is 6 months old.
    > Then by the time you get your visa 3 months later after submission you will only
    > have 3 months to enter Australia and validate. Thats OK if you can drop everything
    > and just go at the drop of a hat. Thats not an option for me for a number of
    > reasons and is probably the same for a lot of other people also. Note I did say I
    > "believe" this is the case with final entry date being dependant on when police
    > checks are done. Can anyone confirm this?
    > Thanks again,
    > Neil

Jaj

Why not ring - or write, by registered post - to your case officer and tell him you
are getting new police checks (and maybe ask him to be understanding in the light of
the situation in the UK ... )

Jeremy

    >On Mon, 2 Sep 2002 14:26:07 +0100, "DaveS" <[email protected]> wrote:

    >I can attest to this not being the 'smartest' move I made when filing my
    >application. I've recently received my Pre-Visa Grant letter with an entry date of
    >23rd October ! Something of a shock since we (my wife and I) were hoping for a few
    >months to settle our UK things. I thought I was doing the right thing to
    >front-load the application with medicals/police checks but it's the 12 month
    >validity of the police checks that has put us in this predicament. ie. they were
    >issued on 23rd Oct 2001.
    >I've applied for a new police check in the hope of extending the entry date but
    >with the police trying to process 25000 teachers reports immediately there might be
    >a significant delay which could take me over the 30days I have to respond to the
    >Grant advice.
    >dave

Daves

spot on - did that by email and he'll accept a delay in us replying to the Pre-Visa
advice. cheers dave


"JAJ" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]...
    > Why not ring - or write, by registered post - to your case officer and tell him you
    > are getting new police checks (and maybe ask him to be understanding in the light
    > of the situation in the UK ... )
    > Jeremy
    > >On Mon, 2 Sep 2002 14:26:07 +0100, "DaveS" <[email protected]> wrote:
    > >I can attest to this not being the 'smartest' move I made when filing my
    > >application. I've recently received my Pre-Visa Grant letter with an entry date of
    > >23rd October ! Something of a shock since we (my wife and I) were hoping for a few
    > >months to settle our UK things. I thought I was doing the right thing to
    > >front-load the application with medicals/police checks but it's the 12 month
    > >validity of the police checks that has put us in this predicament. ie. they were
    > >issued on 23rd Oct 2001.
    > >
    > >I've applied for a new police check in the hope of extending the entry date but
    > >with the police trying to process 25000 teachers reports immediately there might
    > >be a significant delay which could take me over the 30days I have to respond to
    > >the Grant advice.
    > >
    > >dave
    > >