New Visa Applications Centre in Sydney opens

I formally opened the new Visa Applications Centre (VAC) in Sydney today. It’s actually been operating since 17 March 2014, along with new VACs in Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Canberra. The change is part of a global project by UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) to outsource these arrangements.

A million Australians visit the UK each year, but fewer than 20,000 of them need visas. Australians do not normally need a visa to visit as a tourist or to stay less than six months. But visas are required for employment, full-time study or long term settlement. People living in Australia who are not Australian citizens may need visas for the UK, depending on their country of citizenship. The detailed rules and procedures can be found on the UK Visas website.

Until this month, to apply for a UK visa in Australia, you had to come into one of our Consulates around the country. Now you will visit a VAC operated by UK Visas’outsourced supplier VFS Global. VFS Global have already been running this service for the UK very successfully for some years in other parts of the world.

At the VAC you record your biometric details (photo and fingerprints) and the application is then sent by the VAC to the visa hub in Manila for processing. Your passport should be returned within three weeks.

Most countries will only have one or two VACs, in the cities where demand is greatest. VFS will have full-time offices in Sydney and Melbourne which together account for 73% of Australian demand for UK visas. But in order to continue to serve customers across the vast continental scale of Australia, VFS will also be operating offices fulltime in Brisbane, and on certain days of the week in Perth and Canberra – check the opening hours here.

In order to do this they will need to levy an additional standard global service charge of £59 (around $112 at present) in those cities. This charge will not apply in Sydney or Melbourne. I don’t suppose the differential pricing will be universally popular, but the alternative would have been not to have VACs outside the two big cities.

For those in South Australia, there is also currently an opportunity to register biometrics at the Adelaide offices of the Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection. This is not a full VAC service, as the applicant will have to send their passport off to Manila themselves, but it does mean customers in South Australia do not have to travel interstate to submit an application.

There is good news if you are in a hurry. As part of the reforms, UK Visas and Immigration introduced on 1 April a new priority service for work, study and visit visas, which costs £100 (around $190) and reduces processing time from 3 weeks to 5 days. The details on how to apply are here.

This follows a similar priority service for long term settlement visas which has been operating since last September and which cuts processing time from 12 weeks to 10 working days, for a cost of £300 (around $570).

It was good to see the smart new VAC in Sydney with its attractive GREAT imagery of the UK, and to meet the new staff who seemed very enthusiastic. So far they’ve been handling about 50 applications a day. The busiest season tends to be March through to June as people plan holidays to take advantage of the great British summer. Visit Britain’s website has lots of information on wonderful places to visit.