Starting from February 13, visa applicants to UK visa centers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou can scan application materials at the centers, which will then be sent electronically to UK visa and immigration authorities.
Apart from a valid passport, visa applicants can now bring home other application materials after they are verified and scanned by staff at UK visa centers.
Xerox copies of application materials are accepted by the visa centers, but applicants must make sure the documents are still readable.
Types of visas applicable under the new visa process include:
Work visas - General or urgent Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 5 visas
Student visas - General Tier 4 visas for students
Residence visas - General residence permits
But for all urgent and "super urgent" Tier 4 visas, applicants are still required to submit original paper documents. To shorten waiting time at visa centers, applicants are urged to follow the following instructions:
Documents submitted must be in A4 size.
Photocopy non-A4 size documents onto A4 papers, including your passport page.
Documents submitted cannot be stapled or clipped.
Documents must not be compressed.
Broken or crumpled documents cannot be scanned; photocopy them beforehand.
If a document is shared by multiple applicants, such as within a family, each applicant must prepare a complete set of photocopies of the document.
Applicants are reminded that they must bring all their original documents and make them into A4 size. All original documents will be returned to applicants after they are scanned by visa center staff.
Staff at visa application centers will provide barcode slips to help applicants categorize different documents, for example financial documents and English language ability certificates.
It is the responsibility of applicants to sort out documents into different categories with the provided barcode slips. This will help visa centers scan and return documents to applicants more quickly, and also reduce the waiting time.
Applicants are reminded that if documents are not in English (or Welsh), they must provide a complete translation to help visa centers verify the documents independently. Implementation time for the new visa application process is as follows:
Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou: February 13
Shenyang, Xi'an, Fuzhou, Changsha, Chengdu, Nanjing and Hangzhou: February 17
Wuhan, Jinan, Shenzhen, Chongqing and Kunming: February 24
