The consultants at Breytenbachs Immigration often receive desperate pleas from South Africans for urgent help on their UK travel urgencies. We have subsequently compiled a short guideline as a reference, should you ever land yourself in one of these unfortunate positions.
Urgent Travel to the UK
The British High Commission in South Africa normally processes visitor visas within 4 weeks from the date you submit your visa application. It is thus imperative that travelers plan ahead in order to avoid disappointment.
Fortunately, the British High Commission does have a priority service available, but at an additional cost. This priority service processes the visitor visa applications within 5 working days.
Payment in priority service does not guarantee that you will be granted a visa, and all the necessary requirements still have to be met. In this regard, persons should keep in mind that tourist visa applications are non-refundable. Should your tourist visa application be unsuccessful, you will lose your visa application fee.
Applicants who make use of the priority service for visitors, and have previously been denied a visa by the British High Commission, must take note of the fact that the priority service in their cases could take longer than the 5 working days.
Passports running out of pages
If your passport has not expired yet but is running out of pages, it is unfortunately not possible to just add pages!
You will have to apply for a new passport. For the UK tourist visas, we recommend that persons have a least two blank pages left.
It is thus once again imperative that persons plan ahead, and make sure there are enough pages left in their passports.
Expired Passports
If your passport has expired, you will have to apply for a new passport. Contrary to what some persons believe, there is no longer an emergency travel document available.
Fortunately, nowadays the passport applications are relatively fast and can take between 2 to 4 weeks. But once again, we want to emphasize that persons should not take chances, and always ensure that their passports are valid, should they ever need to travel in case of emergencies.
Stolen or Lost Passports in the UK
Should you ever land yourself in the unfortunate position of losing or getting your passport stolen in the UK, you will need to report your passport lost/stolen at a local police station.
Once you have a case number, you can attend the South African High Commission who will assist in applying for a new passport. You may need copies of your current status in the UK.
If you have any urgent UK travel questions, would like to find out about longer term UK visitor visas, or would like us to assist with your application, please feel free to contact us today! Breytenbachs Immigration has two affiliate offices in Pretoria and Cape Town. Contact us today at http://www.bic-immigration.com/
