[sul75]

Hi All

I have been a long time reader of these forums and have found them an invaluable source of information but now I need some help to.

I am an Australian citizen and my wife is British and we have been married just over 11 years. We have decided to go back to the UK but unfortunately my wife does not meet the income threshold to be able to sponsor me as she only works part time. We have luckily managed to negotiate with my current employer to transfer me to our UK office which will happen under a Type 2 ICT visa. All good so far.

For reasons I wont get into they will not put our 2 children (8 and 4) on my visa so we are in the process of applying for their own UK passports. Our oldest has had one previously so this is not an issue but on applying for our youngest we found out that neither mine or my wife’s middle names have been put on her birth certificate and the application will not be accepted.

We rang the Australian birth registry office and they have said they need to investigate this which will take 5-6 weeks. If it is their error they will fix if free of charge and if we left the info off the registration they will charge us $55. We offered to pay the fee then just to get it resolved but they will not do it until they have "investigated"

My question is, will the youngest traveling on an Australian passport with no long term visa cause an issue on arrival, considering I would have a long term visa and my wife and oldest child UK passports. We would also only have one way tickets. Once we arrive there we would look at getting a UK passport showing her entitlement to remain but we don’t want to have to wait for the registry office to fix up the birth certificate and then the passport time on top of that. We were hoping to be gone before December this year.

Many thanks
sul75

 

[Joppa]

This is a tricky situation.
Normally, your younger child can travel on Australian passport and can then apply for British passport in UK (you should carry some documents such as her birth certificate and your wife's birth and marriage certificates). But the fact that British High Commission has refused to accept the passport application over missing names may complicate things. Ideally it should all be sorted in Australia and she should travel on her British passport, but this will delay your travel.
I suggest that if you don't want to wait, contact the UK passport helpline and ask if missing middle names will create problems for applying for her passport in UK. Don't say you are in Australia, as the helpline is meant only for UK enquiries, but just ask a general question.
Passport Adviceline
Telephone: 0300 222 0000.
I think you can't dial this number from outside UK, so can you ask a relative in UK to call on your behalf?
There is also an email enquiry form at https://contact.homeoffice.gov.uk/contact.php?survey=1&pager=2