Wrong council named on Approval Letter

[rayclark]

My wife received her approval letter this week asking us to contact the council to arrange the citizenship ceremony. We have always lived in York and did NOT request for the ceremony to be anywhere else. However the letter asks us to call Wistminster Council for the ceremony. This is clearly a mistake.

After calling the HO, York Council and Wistminster Council we were told that we need to send an email to citizenship.support@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk to explain the problem. We did so 2 days ago and no reply yet.

My concern is that they will take a long time correcting this error and she will miss the ceremony in the first week of November and will have to wait till December.

Any advise on how we can resolve this soon??

[Gnanasekar]

@rayclark

I was in similar situation last year. Sent an email and was picked up next day. The process to correct will need the home office to contact original council and return the documents and send to your council.

Give it a day and chase them on phone / email.

Email address used is Citizenship.Support@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

[rayclark]

Many thanks Gnanasekar. How long did it take for your documents to be transferred from the wrong council to your council? Do you remember?

@rayclark

I was in similar situation last year. Sent an email and was picked up next day. The process to correct will need the home office to contact original council and return the documents and send to your council.

Give it a day and chase them on phone / email.

Email address used is Citizenship.Support@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

[rayclark]

Just an update on this situation:

After writing an email to the Home Office we had no response for 4 days, so wrote a second time. We also decided to write to our MP explaining that we need to contact the council within 21 days but the documents are at the wrong council. We got a reply the next day from the Home Office saying that they would organise the transfer of our documents from Westminster to York and issue a new approval letter with a new deadline to contact the council. After 10 days of that email I decided to call our council and they confirmed that her documents had arrived. With just 1 day's notice the council was able to accommodate my wife at yesterday's ceremony.

We are much relieved that we didn’t have to wait another month to attend the ceremony in December. We haven’t received that second letter from the Home Office but who cares… they are completely incompetent anyway if they can’t send documents to the correct council.

I must add that the ladies at York Council were very helpful and understanding. They all thought it was very unfair that we had to sort out an error caused by the HO. They even called the Home Office on our behalf but unfortunately they got the standard response… “send us an email (because we have no brains)”. Westminster Council was another story… they had no time for us. Said they would call us back but never did.

Good luck to you all!!

[Casa]

Pleased to hear you have it sorted and thanks for letting us know. It will help other members in a same situation.