UK Fiance Visa Processing Time 2023

If you are a non-British who’s engaged to a British citizen or an individual with UK settled status or indefinite leave to remain, you might be considering applying for a UK Fiance visa to enter the country. With this visa, you’ll be permitted to enter the UK and live there with your prospective spouse for six months on the terms that you get married. To prove this, you should book your marriage ceremony during the six months leave to remain as a fiance in the UK, and ideally, details of the ceremony should be one of the documents that you should upload to the online application system, which has to be submitted to UKVI.

The condition for your leave to remain in the UK on this visa route is that the Home Office expects you to have married your partner or transitioned your engagement to a civil partnership within six months of you entering the country. If you do not do so, you may run into some immigration issues if you do not act upon them with an experienced team of immigration solicitors who can present your case accurately to the Home Office. 

Where Can You Apply for a UK Fiance Visa From?

All UK fiance visa applications are made outside the UK. They cannot be made from within the UK, but an extension of stay for more than six months if there is a good reason why the marriage did not occur within the initial six-month period is possible from within the UK. If you fall in this category and are in need of an appeal for your UK Fiance visa because you did not get married within the six-month time frame, then do not hesitate to contact us to discuss it. 

Can a Fiance Visa be Denied?

Like any other immigration application, your UK fiance visa application request will be approved or rejected by the Home Office. In fact, the immigration department rejects many fiance visa applications every year. On this note, it is crucial that you know the major reasons behind rejected applications so that you know beforehand what to do or avoid doing when submitting your visa request. 

They are:

• The inability to meet the minimum financial requirement
  (To prove that the spouses-to-be won’t be a burden to the state, they are required to prove that they have a minimum combined annual income of at least £18,600 gross).
  
  
• Doubts that the validity of the relationship between the applicant and the sponsor is genuine. 
  (If the applicant doesn’t provide sufficient or correct evidence of their relationship with their partner, for example, by independent evidence and statements from family and friends and photos.)
  
  
• Ineligibility of the partners to marry each other.
  (This can come following their background checks and skepticism from the Home Office about the documents you have provided. The Home Office may point out some reasons that hinder the chances of the applicant marrying or getting into a civil partnership with their prospective spouse. For instance, if it is discovered that one of the partners is still married or in a civil partnership with another person, there’s a high possibility that the visa application request will be denied.)
  
  
• There has been a failure to disclose previous criminal convictions if any or having a criminal record.
  
  
• There has been a failure to appear credible in the visa application or during the relevant interview, for instance, by providing contradicting information.
  
  
• A failure to submit the correct application forms
  
  
• Incomplete sections in the visa application form
  
  
• Unpaid Home Office fees
  
  
• Lack of biometric information
  
  
• A failure to sign the relevant sections in the application forms. 

UK Fiance Visa Processing Time – How long does it take to get a decision? 

Upon receiving your application, UK Visa and Immigration (UKVI) will examine and verify your information to give the most appropriate verdict. The outcome will depend on various factors, including:

• The sufficiency, accuracy, and authenticity of the supporting documents you supplied. 
• The reason(s) given for the application
• Whether the required Home Office fees are paid in full
• Your criminal history 
• Your honesty in providing the required information 
• How you filled in the application form

It might not be possible for you to know the exact date of when you’ll get a response from the Home Office. However, in most cases, the UKVI gives a verdict on a fiance visa application within 12 weeks (three months) from the date of the application submission. The waiting period excludes national/international public holidays and weekends. So, unless you paid for priority service and your application was fully completed with the right information and supporting documents, expect to get a verdict from the Home Office within three months.