sbasak

I am on UK as work permit holder. Recently to renew my work permit, I had to send my passport to home office and got it back after more than 2 months. One of my friends, who applied for renewal at the same time, yet to get back his passport.

My question is:

How long does it take to get the passport back from home office after work permit extension. I like to know this because I had a hunch that my employer is holding back my passport unnecessarily with the excuse of home office. And I belive living in a foreign country, without passport for months, is bit risky.

Thank you.

CPW

I believe that they were recently saying up to 13 weeks; if so, then 2 months is well within that time frame. But the average delay varies, and of course some cases are more difficult than others.

Anyway, why would your employer want to hold back the passport unnecessarily? What would be the advantage of doing that?

There's no legal requirement in the UK to have identification, so there's no 'risk' in not having your passport from that point of view. You might feel more comfortable if you had a photocopy of the ID page and of the work permit page, although that would not be accepted as proof of work permit anyway. For most practical purposes, if you need ID (which is relatively rare in day-to-day life in the UK), you can use other items - driving licence, credit card, utility bills, etc. If worst came to worst (e.g. trouble with the police or something like that) and you needed to prove a legal right to be in the country, the fact that your papers were at the Home Office would not be held against you.

sbasak

Thanks for your reply. You cleared my doubt.

Regarding, your questions, one advantage is that I won't be able to look for any job elsewhere..... my employer is paying me much less than the market rate (though they are charging high rate to client)... so they won't like if I move so some other company....

Gremlin

Your passport shouldn't be required by the Home Office to extend your work permit as your WP1X no longer needs to be supported by this document. You will have to send it off to support your application for 'Further Leave to Remain (in the UK)' (FLR) though. This endorsement to a passport is currently taking about 10 weeks. Also, provided the application form is correct, my understanding is that work permit applications and extensions are currently only taking about one or two weeks to process.