# Incorrect Spelling of Middle Name on Biometric Enrolment Letter



## JohnCreek (Dec 28, 2014)

Hi,

My wife and I recently submitted an online application for her 2.5 year extension of stay in the UK (5 year route) as the partner of a British Citizen (me) via the flr(m) online application form. We submitted the online form, paid the fee, and sent the supporting documents by post.

We have now received a letter informing us that our application has been received, and that my wife must go to the post office to enrol her biometric information. 

However, on the letter which must be shown to the post office, my wife's middle name has been miss spelt ('Maire' instead of 'Marie').

There was a number provided on the letter to call in the event that personal details are incorrect, however they were of absolutely no use whatsoever, and simply informed us that we should email [email protected].

We emailed that address on the 5th of September to explain the situation. We received an automated response, but nothing else since.

The letter says we only have 10 days from the date it was sent (1st of September) to get the biometrics done. This leaves us up until Friday (15th September) to obtain a new letter and enrol the biometrics, which does not seem likely to happen at this point.

Is there a number we can ring to explain the situation?

Will our application be affected by the fact that we may not enrol at the post office within the 10 days?

Can we take the letter to the post office anyway and have the name corrected during the biometrics appointment if we provide suitable ID? (we have my wife's birth certificate as it was not required to be sent off with the application).

Any advice on what we can do in this situation would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.


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## JohnCreek (Dec 28, 2014)

So as it seems this issue is something that crops up surprisingly regularly, but is perhaps not easy to answer by the regular posters(heros) that usual help out on here, I’ve decided to add the situation for us so far just incase it’s helpful in some way to anybody else reading this.

Firstly, after re-reading the home office letter we noticed it actually states 15 working days to enrol for biometrics at the post office, not 10 as we first thought, so we have an extra week to get this sorted.

Apart from the immediate auto-reply, we have STILL not received a response to our email sent 7 working days ago to [email protected]. We have no idea if they have even read it. For all we know the new letter could be on it's way to us and show up tomorrow in the post. Would be nice to know in advance though right?? I guess our £993 application fee doesn’t cover the phone-line rental fee to allow us to speak to an ACTUAL PERSON.

There is no number I have called at the home office that will get you any response other than "We can't re-issue the letter, please email [email protected]". I have scoured the web all day and rang multiple numbers, which was a complete waste of time.

Our nearest post office which will carry out the biometrics is 10 miles away, so we called rather than travelled there. As expected, they have no authority to correct the mistake during the biometrics appointment and they cannot process the enrolment if details do not match exactly.

As I was browsing various forum posts relating to this same issue (which seems to happen to a LOT of people), I noticed a post which mentioned speaking to your local MP. This thought had never even crossed my mind, I've never contacted my MP before and to be totally honest I didn't really know exactly when and why you would need to.

Luckily, I have a good friend who spent several years working for a local MP’s office. He told me that this is absolutely the kind of thing he would support people with on a regular basis and provided me with some links to my local constituency and instructions for what to do.

I firstly called up the constituency office and explained the situation. The employee I spoke to was extremelly helpful and sympathetic, and when I mentioned the tight deadline she immediately got straight to the point and gave me a specific parliamentary email address to contact my local MP as soon as I possibly could. Even though he is very busy at the moment and has no surgery appointment spaces for several weeks, she told me to put absolutely everything possible about the whole situation into an email, including wife's Home Office case number (most important item apparently), photographs of all pages on the Home Office letter, dates of application, both of our full contact details and anything else I could think of.

She told me to send that email as soon as possible, and that she would ring ahead to the relevant staff and / or my local MP if available to emphasise the tight deadline and for them to expect an email from my address that afternoon.

I wrote out an absolute essay, giving a brief backstory to our situation, previous successful visa applications, and how much stress not knowing anything about the status of our application is putting us both under. I attached photos of the home office letter with the typo, my wife’s birth certificate, and a copy of the email we sent to [email protected] plus the auto-reply we received back.

This all got sent late this afternoon (14th September 2017), so yet to hear anything back so far. But it is at least somewhat reassuring to know that SOMEBODY is looking into it. My friend informs me that MP’s and their staff have emergency contact numbers for the home office and can call in to ask for things to be escalated if they deem nescessary.

We feel now that even if we miss the biometrics deadline, we have a group of people who know about the issue and will help us if they can.

Anyway, this got a bit long, but I hope it may help somebody panicking about the same thing at some point in the future. I will continue to update this thread with whatever happens either way.


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## Joppa (Sep 7, 2009)

I'd have said that as it is only a minor spelling error, it should not affect her application in any way.


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## JohnCreek (Dec 28, 2014)

Joppa said:


> I'd have said that as it is only a minor spelling error, it should not affect her application in any way.





Joppa said:


> I'd have said that as it is only a minor spelling error, it should not affect her application in any way.


Hey, thanks for the reply.

As the spelling error was made by the home office (on the enrolment letter only) and not by us, the letter to take to the post office was apparently not able to be accepted by them to proceed with biomterics, as all personal details on the letter need to match the application details exactly. We were told by the post office that this is the case even if the mistake is trivial, such as this one.

So our concern was that we would miss the biometrics deadline, which I believe can have a negative impact on our application? We have been unable to open up any kind of communication with UK Visas (other than the email auto-response) to explain the situation, so we had no idea if they even read the email or not. They may not have, and assumed we didn't enrol for biometrics on time.

We actually received a response from our local MP today (within 24 hours), who has contacted the home office on our behalf via a direct number MPs are given. The message has been passed on to us that the mistake on the letter is under investigation and this may take up to two weeks before sending us out a new one. Our deadline for biometrics enrolment will be moved in accordance with this. We were even given the name of the person dealing with the investigation.

So, crisis averted, thanks to our lovely local MP, but it could have been so much less stressful if there was a properly managed contact number, or they employed more than the seemingly one person who's job it is to reply to emails!


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