Page 1 of 1

Did you know NCS fees differ by council?

Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2015 11:55 am
by infoforyou
So you are thinking of using the Nationality Checking Service when making your citizenship application. But how much does it cost?

Well - I was shocked to learn that the fees vary considerably by council! It doesn't matter which you choose to submit your application - and I would have reasonably expected that the fee charged would be the same everywhere - but it isn't.

I've created a web page that polls a sample of councils every day - and publishes a table summarising the adult and child costs - so you can see how councils charge different rates.

But note that this information is a) not warranted or guaranteed to be accurate, b) not warranted or guaranteed to be up-to-date, and c) does not cover every council or every situation.

The child fees I've scraped are for individual child applications. Often there will be a reduced fee for child applications made along with an adult application. There are some fee reductions when more than one adult is making a joint application.

Most councils require you to book ahead for an appointment - sometimes as much as 3 weeks or more.

You can find the list of sampled NCS fees at: http://www.pirosa.co.uk/demo/ncs/ncstable.html

Re: Did you know NCS fees differ by council?

Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2015 11:32 am
by fwd079
Bit of Googling might have saved you hard work. :lol:
Not that I am not appreciating your work, but the list is not only incomplete, but also prone to go outdated very soon and without notice. And your list has only few of England's NCS, ignoring Scotland and Wales.

If you click here, you will find Home Office's link to all NCS's in UK. I'd refer you to link there in your own web page to keep yourself updated.

Re: Did you know NCS fees differ by council?

Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2015 8:26 pm
by infoforyou
Thanks for your reply. Your link does not provide any costs - but it is a comprehensive list of locations offering a NCS service.

As you correctly point out my list is not comprehensive - which I pointed out in the post. And I provide something unavailable at the government website: a summary to give people an idea of the differing costs between councils.

The table I produce shows the last date the price was successfully extracted from the linked webpage.

Re: Did you know NCS fees differ by council?

Posted: Mon Feb 02, 2015 9:05 pm
by fwd079
infoforyou wrote:Thanks for your reply. Your link does not provide any costs - but it is a comprehensive list of locations offering a NCS service.

As you correctly point out my list is not comprehensive - which I pointed out in the post. And I provide something unavailable at the government website: a summary to give people an idea of the differing costs between councils.

The table I produce shows the last date the price was successfully extracted from the linked webpage.
As I said the list you provided is very much likely to go outdated, I am not discouraging you, I am actually saying such production of links is futile and here's why, the NCS list link I provided, as you incorrectly stated, does have price list. How? You select your country eg England, then select your council eg Birmingham and then go to provided link, that link will take you to that council's website, which is also a Govt website, and will give you up to date pricing. So Govt websites do have pricing. But I know what you meant by Govt website ie gov uk itself.

So you see. Good effort, but any change in any of sites is likely to break your page, if not sooner then definitely later. But we both kind of get the point. :)