help re police checks

[Guest Tanya]

hi all, haven't been on for quite a while but have managed to achieve passing the dreaded IELTS and obtain a positive skills assessment Now I'm stuck waiting for SA state sponsorship approval Anyway, I've seen (or think I have) where people have gone ahead and got their police checks and medicals done in advance so they have them in hand for when applying for their visa. (I'll deal with the medicals later). Can someone tell me how I go about getting the police checks? I've lived in Northern Ireland and Scotland during the last 10yrs so do I need to contact someone in both places or is there somewhere that covers the UK as a whole? Also, does the DIAC accept the police checks coming from us or do they need to be sent direct to them from whoever issues them?? If so, who do I get them sent to?? any other info would be much appreciated so I can get the ball rolling on the next lot of paperwork for a 176 visa xx

[Guest Dazzlin]

hi all, haven't been on for quite a while but have managed to achieve passing the dreaded IELTS and obtain a positive skills assessment Now I'm stuck waiting for SA state sponsorship approval Anyway, I've seen (or think I have) where people have gone ahead and got their police checks and medicals done in advance so they have them in hand for when applying for their visa. (I'll deal with the medicals later). Can someone tell me how I go about getting the police checks? I've lived in Northern Ireland and Scotland during the last 10yrs so do I need to contact someone in both places or is there somewhere that covers the UK as a whole? Also, does the DIAC accept the police checks coming from us or do they need to be sent direct to them from whoever issues them?? If so, who do I get them sent to?? any other info would be much appreciated so I can get the ball rolling on the next lot of paperwork for a 176 visa xx

 

Hi Tanya,

 

DIAC strongly recommends against you obtaining police certs or undertaking the medicals until you have been asked to do so by your case officer. If you have not even got a case officer yet then it would be unwise to do this. These are the final steps in your visa assessment and I have heard it suggested that, if asked to do them, then you are pretty much there. We received our visa within 2 weeks of having the medicals, and we have to validate the visas by entering Australia by the first anniversary of the date of our medicals.

 

Police certs for the whole of the UK are issued by ACRO (www.acro.police.uk). They send the cert to you and you just upload a scanned copy of them to their website (if you go down the e-visa route which I highly recommend).I f the date of this cert is much before the date of your case assessment then you may find they won't accept it.

 

Good luck - we move in 7 weeks, 2 days (not that I'm counting)

 

Daren

[Guest the Tews]

Hi Tanya

 

Dont worry about getting them done yet, wait until they ask you. We did ours 3 times, 1st time the diac were being a nightmare with our sponser and by the end pulled out as we had had enough, 2nd time when we changed our minds! and our agent recommended we did them then we were again mucked about by the diac. By the time the diac requested them they had expired by a week so that was another £70 down the drain!

ACRO do the certs, download form,send photos etc to them and they post back to you fairly quickly and you just scan and email off. I think they cover the whole of the UK.

 

Good luck, Andrea

[snifter]

My understanding of the disadvantage of having police checks and medicals done beforehand is that it can shorten the length of time your visa validation is active from when your visa is granted. That the clock starts ticking from the date of whichever you have done first, so if you have a police check or medical done beforehand now, then get your visa granted in 8 months, you only have 4 months left to activate. If that makes sense.

 

Not sure this applies to all visa types but it does seem to for lots of them.

 

I'd wait till you are asked unless you know you'll defo be heading out there asap after they are granted and don't have to worry about activation time frames and other things.

[Guest Helchops]

We booked both the meds and the police checks as soon as we'd lodged the visa. The reason being that we thought if we could get everything uploaded, with loads of proof and we could do the meds and police checks, a nice case officer would come along and just give us the visa.

 

Usually for us, 'sods law' would have thrown a plumbers wrench into the works, but in this occasion we were actually right, and we went from having no Case officer to having the visa granted overnight.

 

I would say its a good way of getting the visa quickly, but as snifter says, it will mean you have to initially enter Australia more quickly as the deadline is the earlier of 12 months from when you had your Medicals or police checks done. Good Luck!!

[Guest Tanya]

thanks everyone for those replies, we intend on being there by the end of the year so might hold off and send for them when we apply for the visa like you did Helchops, will hang off for now anyway, thanks again for the advice all! xx