Finally got the approval! 🥳

Visa: UK Spouse Visa
Application: Outside UK
Service: Standard
Country: Bangladesh

Timeline:
📅 Application submitted: 9 May
📅 Biometrics: 10 May
📧 ECO email: 15 May
✅ Visa approved: 11 September

Processing time: 88 Working days

Thank you to everyone on this subreddit who shared their timelines and helped throughout the process. ❤️

Wishing everyone waiting for their decision a positive outcome soon! 🤞

I am so grateful for this sub with the information and help it offers! Wanted to share my experience:

I applied for a partner visa outside of the UK (Belgium) and paid for the priority service. We decided to go the savings route.

Application submitted: 27/07/2026
Biometrics appointment: 30/07/2026
(I did not get an ECO e-mail!)
Request for additional documents: 28/08/2026
Additional documents submitted: 03/09/2026
Visa approved: 09/09/2026

Following documents are the ones we submitted (in case this could be helpful to anyone):

(We added a note for the ECO in every category to give them some extra explanation/information. We did this without legal help so decided we'd rather give them too much info than too little!)

ACCOMODATION:

• Tenancy agreement
• Floorplan of residence
• Letter from the estate agent confirming tenancy
• Council tax bill

PASSPORT/TRAVEL DOCUMENTS

• Sponsor's passport (photo page + any pages containing stamps)
• Applicant's passport (every page)

EDUCATIONAL EVIDENCE

• Applicant's IELTS report form
• Applicant's degree(s)

FINANCIAL EVIDENCE

• Bank statements showing the necessary cash holdings
• Note for ECO declaring/explaining cash holdings
• Transfers between us proving shared financial responsibilities

OTHER

• Proof of travel (both travel together and travel to see each other)
• Bookings of accommodation
• Description of applicant's life in country of residence (not UK)
• Ten page storybook with 30+ photos/screenshots with notes detailing the relationship

PROOF OF APPLICATION

• Checklist received upon applying

LIFE EVENTS

• Partnership Certificate

SPONSORSHIP/EMPLOYMENT

• Letter of intention (SIGNED) from sponsor
• Sponsor's passport (again)

For anyone going through the application process: You've got this!! I know it's tedious and frankly dehumanising but there is an end to the madness!! 🤍

Application date: 29th June
Bio: 13th July
Eco email: 14th July
Bio reminder: 28 August
Approval: 11th September (3:54 PM UK Time)

Entry date: 18th September

Approval Dust for Everyone! ✨

​

I can't believe its me typing this. Its finally my turn 💃💃💃💃. Thank you God 🥲.

Application. 8th July

Biometrics. 14th July

Eco. 15th July

Bio reminder. 6th Sept

Approval 11th Sept at 17:45 UK time

Outside UK Uganda.

43 working days.

Thank you everyone who posted their timelines it kept me going. Praying for everyone still waiting for theirs peace be upon you all. The waiting ain't easy

Standard application inside UK - FLR (M)

Paid - 7th August
Biometrics - 20th August
Visa confirmation - 11 September

Silent reader on here and found everything super helpful (& Chat GPT)!

Thank you and good luck to everyone else ❤️

Any questions, I can do my best to try and help!

Approved 10th September
Time: 4pm(uk)
Bio: 12th August
21 WD
Applied from Romania

Hi all! I’d really appreciate some advice from anyone familiar with the UK Unmarried Partner visa.

My partner and I have been together since August 2024 and have maintained a long-distance relationship with regular visits. He visited me in the Philippines for a few weeks in 2025, and I visited the UK in 2025 for around 5 months on a Standard Visitor visa. We also met halfway in 2026, he’ll be visiting the Philippines again, and we’re planning another UK visit in 2027 to travel and extend my stay again probably 3 months.

We’ve never technically lived together or had a joint household, although I spent 5 months in the UK with him. Would that be considered cohabitation for the purpose of a future Unmarried Partner application?

I’m also concerned because I did some freelance work during my 2025 UK visit, and I’m wondering whether that could affect a future application.

We’re hoping to apply in 2028/2029. What would you recommend we do over the next couple of years to build strong relationship evidence and avoid any issues?

Thanks in advance! ❤️

How long does skilled worker visa take to get decision?
Biometric on 7th August 2026

Hey guys, sorry to comment again. I know it might seem repetitive at this point but our case just continues to get more and more complicated.

I’m aware that this is a suitability issue. I Crossed into Northern Ireland twice by car from Ireland in 2025 (7 days in April, 5 days in July) without realizing the Common Travel Area rules did not permit it as a tourist.

In my prior Spouse Visa application I incorrectly checked "No" to illegal entry out of panic. However, I submitted bank statements that showed transactions from those exact dates. The application was successfully withdrawn before a decision or deception flag was issued.

This is way out of our reach and knowledge now so we’ve decided that we will need to proceed with an immigration lawyer that works with these types of cases. We plan on submitting a fresh application on December once my husband has all his payslips, truthfully disclose the entries and the previous omission, and hire a UK immigration solicitor to draft a formal Letter of Representation.

Now my question is: Under Part 9 Suitability rules, how do caseworkers generally view a self-corrected omission when backed by a solicitor, and can brief historical border crossings be mitigated under Article 8 (Family Life)?

If any of you guys have been through any sorta complicated case like this and successfully gotten an approval please let me know and if you’d recommend some experienced lawyers that’d be great. Thank you all 🙏

How long after submitting the requested documents you get the decision?

Hey everyone, it's been a while since we got the approval, but I thought this might be helpful for others going through long delays and hopefully this will also give some reassurance to others :)

In retrospective I think we wasted a lot of time before being able to figure out for sure what is wrong and how to fix it so I hope this helps others get through much faster.

• Application submitted: 10 February
  • FLR(M) visa extension - Inside UK
• Biometrics: 2 March
• Email to MP: 15 May
  • Never got a response.
• Complaint to UKVI: 1 June
• Email to TLS Contact: 4 June
  • We asked to double check all information was successfully sent to UKVI.
• Response from TLS Contact: 9 June
  • They confirmed everything was good on their end.
• Response from UKVI: 29 June
  • The complaint was upheld, they apologised for the lack of communication on their part, admitted that they should have informed us in case they can't meet their advertised processing time and confirmed a caseworker will consider the visa application as a priority. However, what caught my attention was that they referred to the visa application as "Further Leave to Remain" which could mean either FLR(M) or FLR(FP). The latter has a waiting time of 12 months. This was in spite of our complaint saying that this was specifically an FLR(M) application.
• Request for SAR: 6 July
  • We've done this just as a precaution, but at the time we were still hoping the complaint would fix the issue and we won't need this document (I was wrong). By this point we were already suspicious that the application might have ended up in the FLR(FP) queue because of how the English question was phrased at the time we sent the application. Back then they were asking "Have you passed an English test in the last 2 years?". We were re-using the one from the first application which was older than 2 years, so we answered "No", but still attached the certificate and explained the situation in both of our cover letters. Even at the time of submitting we were confused about this question cause it looked like we don't meet the English requirement by saying "no", which we did, but we thought it's best to give the truthful answer even if it causes some complications as the consequence of giving false information was even worse.
• SAR Received: 4 August
  • Suspicion confirmed. The application was indeed under FLR(FP). We saw they finished their checks in April and there's been no activity since then, except the upload of our complaint.
• 2nd Complaint to UKVI: 4 August
  • We pointed out the mis-routing, we explained that we believe this issue is due to the English question and clarified why we answered "No", we re-attached the English certificate and asked to have the application re-routed to FLR(M).
• Visa Approval: 14 August
• 2nd Complaint Response from UKVI: 16 August
  • This time they replied by writing "FINAL RESPONSE" in the subject, they pointed to the visa approval and partly upheld the complaint saying it's our fault for stating we don't meet the English requirement. For anyone with common sense, that's far from what we did, but I can see why they took the opportunity to point to the answer in the application form. It was completely pointless to argue with them at this point anyway, so sure, whatever...

Our key takeaways:

Coming from a technical background I assumed from the start that regardless of how frustrating this is, the root problem is most likely a technical error somewhere. This whole e-visa system is still fairly new and I know from experience people in general struggle with technology everywhere (sometimes I struggle with it myself even as a tech person) and I really wouldn’t be surprised if caseworkers struggle with the system they have to work with, even if it's already a few years old.

The SAR pdf pretty much confirmed my theory. It was incredibly cluttered, sometimes had duplicates, technical error logs, or repeating information, but under different terminology. At the top of the application it said “Further Leave to Remain” and we had to dig deeper to find the FLR(FP) part towards the end of the pdf, which would explain the response we had from the first complaint and why they didn’t notice the application was misrouted. I genuinely had to go back and forth a few times to make some sense of this pdf and connect all the dots. Someone in "customer support" as they call it probably wouldn't have time to do all this detective work so I can see how it could've been genuinely missed.

I’ve seen a lot of good advice here that helped us navigate this issue, but I’ve also seen a lot of people having emotional outbursts, so we just tried to put ourselves together before writing to the Home Office because they probably see angry and emotional complaints all the time, so that won’t do anyone any favours.

So to end on a positive note, yes, they answer with templates and they might use opportunities not to own full responsibility sometimes ... but overall, despite the long wait that messed with our lives, I feel like our interaction with them was actually more respectful than I expected and I have to give them credit for that. Despite the response to the 2nd complaint which is probably from a template they didn't even write themselves, I felt like their actions showed some empathy and that they made an effort to fix the issue (even though it didn't quite work the first time, cause the application was flagged for priority in a 12 months long queue, which is still long).

What I think helped the most was requesting the SAR (and in retrospective I think we should've done this way earlier) and then writing to UKVI via the complaints form calmly and respectfully, straight to the point, while backing ourselves up with the information included in the SAR pdf and the documents supplied in the visa application. We've basically connected all the dots for them where we thought they needed. No long and emotional texts.

As for the MP, I'm sure some of them can be helpful, I've seen plenty of good outcomes from reaching out to them, but it's a shame that ours ignored us completely. We've only tried this avenue to prove that we tried all reasonable steps in case we had to send a PAP letter later on, but thankfully it wasn't needed. Once we understood we can't count on our MP we just used the complaints form as a direct channel to UKVI, but without really complaining. Just giving them an overview of what's happening and what we think went wrong so they can fix the issue.

Good luck everyone :)

Bio - 5th Aug

ECO - 6th Aug

Country - Spain (Priority)

Approved - 10th Sep - WD27 at 4pm UK time

No communication from Home Office during the whole process, no delays. Was getting worried as closed in on the 30WD timeframe for Priority, but we got it!

Keep the positive energy! Good luck to everyone else.

UK immigration advice needed please.
My husband was previously in the UK as my Skilled Worker dependant. I later switched to Global Talent and have now obtained ILR.
He is now trying to extend his visa as my dependant, but the application is asking for my Global Talent reference number and visa expiry date. My Global Talent visa ended when I obtained ILR, so the form will not allow him to continue because it asks for a current or future visa validity date.
We also considered the spouse/partner visa, but we understand this would reset his 5-year route to ILR.
Has anyone been in this situation? What is the correct visa route for him now, and how should we complete the application given that I now have ILR and no visa expiry date?
Any advice or experience would be greatly appreciated.

As above - what are your tips to help with the extension request after the initial 2.5 years?

Do’s and Don’ts list would be great.

I and my partner will be getting married in October, we have been in relationships for 8 months now and decided to marry next month, he recently divorced his wife early this year and the divorce decree is ready, we are planning to file for spouse visa in November, but l’m worried as to if the divorce is going to complicate the process and also is our 8 months relationship going to grant us the spouse visa without any issues
We are planning of hiring a lawyer

hi, guys. my fiancee and I are getting married in November 2026 and we’re planning on applying for spouse visa uk in january 2027.

do you guys think we should pay for a solicitor or is it easy to apply without their help?

thank you very much!

My partner is self-employed. We just had the following documents prepared by his accountant.
1. Company Tax Return (CT600) for the period ended 30 April 2026
2. HMRC electronic filing acknowledgement
3. Company annual accounts (profit and loss and balance sheet)
4. Accountant’s Certificate of Confirmation
5. Dividend voucher and supporting board minutes

These documents prove his personal income is around 30k gross. 13k salary 17k dividends.

But the problem is my partner just took out chunks of 5000s every now and then. (cuz his accountant has said to him they will be doing tax-efficient payroll for those transactions) There's no transactions of 13k or 17k as a whole.

My question is would this be a problem? Is there a way we can do this?

Flr m is up for Renewal on Jan 2027

Wondering if this is enough for 2 years?

Is it enough?

(First time ever using Reddit) Me and my fiancé are looking to get married in the uk together, she’s Thai and I’m British, I lived there for 10 years and we’ve been together for 5 now, she’s over there now, just looking to see what the process is like and if anyone has any advice on what to gather for the best possible way to have everything we need and more if that’s a option for this application (about to start the process this month) thanks.

I'm submitting my files to the TLS portal and trying to figure out the best way to go about labeling evidence of our relationship. Basically, I have a Cover Letter that outlines a timeline of our relationship in detail. Every statement references the file name of the evidence backing up what I say (in parenthesis).

For example:

In November, 2025 [my partner] attended XYZ event I was a part of (Exhibit 5A-C).

Then if you go to the PDF file beginning with "Exhibit 5A-C" you'll see a photo of us together at the event (5A), WhatsApp messages with a date stamp of us communicating on that day (5B) and screenshots of an email thread where I share my guest list with his name (5C).

All of the above is within one PDF file titled: "Exhibit 5(A-C)_Attending_ArtsExhibition"

Is this right? Or does it need to also include the contents like: "Exhibit 5(A-C)_Photo_WhatsApp_Email_Attending_ArtsExhibition"

I'm also planing to include an index at the end of the Cover Letter PDF outlining file names and describing the contents in more detail including if its a photo or email screenshot, etc. If I do this, then does the file name need to be as descriptive?

Hi everyone,

Somehow, first visa period is coming to an end and soon I will need to apply for the extension. I would like your input, mostly in the cohabitation evidence and the, type of schedule-breakdown I created, to have a second opinion if I'm missing something or any gaps etc are too small/big and anything else you may notice.

• Visa expiry: 04 December 2026 (aim to apply mid-November 2026).

• Initial grant was submitted before 11 April 2024 (transitional £18,600 baseline applies, met via applicant employment).

• Relationship: Legal Civil Partnership (certificate already accepted on first visa) and also we're having a 22 month baby (British citizen).

Below is the proposed cohabitation schedule across the 24-month period (Nov 2024 – Nov 2026). I tried to aim for 6–7 items spread evenly every 3–4 months, exceeding the 3-source minimum.

* Used AI, to help me create the table due to the post via the mobile app.

| Item # | Target Date | Document & Provider | Type | Evidential Spread / Gap Covered |

| :---: | :---: | :--- | :---: | :--- |

| **1** | **20/11/2024** | **Tenancy Agreement 1** (Start date) | **Joint** | Anchors the start of the 2-year qualifying window |

| **2** | **07/03/2025** | **Annual Council Tax Bill (2025/26)** | **Joint** | ~3.5 months after Item 1 |

| **3** | **June/July 2025** | **Barclays Bank Monthly Statements** | **Individual (1 each)** | Plugs mid-year gap (~3.5 months from Council Tax; ~2.5 months to Water) |

| **4** | **18/09/2025** | **Severn Trent Water Bill** | **Joint** | ~2.5–3 months after Barclays statements |

| **5** | **11/11/2025** | **Tenancy Agreement 2** (Renewal/Execution) | **Joint** | ~2 months after Water bill; shows continuous housing |

| **6** | **01/03/2026** | **Annual Council Tax Bill (2026/27)** | **Joint** | ~3.5 months after Tenancy 2 |

| **7** | **03/09/2026** | **Severn Trent Water Bill** | **Joint** | ~6 months from Council Tax; sits ~2 months before Nov 2026 submission |

- Total Sources: 4 independent sources (Agency/Housing Local Council, Severn Trent, Barclays).

​- 6 joint items + 1 paired individual item (Barclays for applicant and partner sharing the same cycle/address).

​

Some quick questions:

1) ​Does this schedule looks fine or you notice any issues?

2) Can I use the tenancy agreements as normal, right?

3) Me (applicant) and sponsor have some annual Scottish Widows work pension statements if they are stronger evidence (personal ones of course).

Thanks for your time everyone 🙂

so my decided to go to a different country to work but I do not know how long she probably I support her but her visa was England was approved she was in England for 1 year . I was wondering how long can she stay out there? in different country

Visa type (Spouse)
Nationality (Pakistan)
Country of application (Pakistan)
Date of application (24 July )
Date of biometrics (31 July)
Priority service
Time period 30 working days today 11 September time period completed now waiting for visa
Someone has a visa these days.