Spouse visa entry clearance with a fee waiver

A spouse visa from outside the UK costs £2,064 plus £3,105 in health surcharge: £5,169 before anyone has looked at the case. The Home Office can waive both where the couple cannot afford them. It can also grant the visa where the £29,000 income rule is not met, if refusing would have unjustifiably harsh consequences. Both exist. Both are hard to get. This page explains what the Home Office is looking for, so you can decide whether it is worth applying.

The fee waiver: who qualifies

A fee waiver for an application from abroad is only available where the application rests on family or private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. A spouse, partner, fiancé or child application under Appendix FM qualifies. Work, study, visit and ancestry applications do not, and mentioning family life in a work application does not change that.

The test is affordability: the applicant and the UK sponsor, taken together, do not have enough money left after meeting their essential living needs to pay the fee. You do not have to be destitute. You do have to show, with documents, that paying would mean going without essentials or into unmanageable debt. Savings, spare income or non-essential spending in the bank statements usually mean refusal.

The waiver can cover the application fee, the immigration health surcharge, or both, and can be granted for some family members and not others. The Home Office does not waive part of one person's fee.

Why the bar is high

The affordability test sits awkwardly next to the financial requirement. A sponsor earning £29,000 a year will rarely be found unable to pay £5,169 over time, so most successful fee waiver cases are also cases where the income rule is not met. That means the application has to succeed on exceptional circumstances as well, under paragraphs GEN.3.1 and GEN.3.2 of Appendix FM:

• the Home Office may count other sources of money (a credible third-party offer, future employment, or the applicant's own prospective earnings) towards the income rule, but only where refusing would breach Article 8;
• it will grant the visa outside the normal rules only where refusal would cause unjustifiably harsh consequences for the applicant, the partner or a child.

"Unjustifiably harsh" is a demanding standard. Separation and expense are the normal results of a refusal and do not meet it on their own. What tends to meet it: a British child who cannot reasonably live outside the UK; a sponsor who cannot relocate because of caring responsibilities, a serious condition or a job that cannot be done abroad; real obstacles to family life in the applicant's country. The decision is made on the whole picture, and the evidence has to be as strong as the claim.

What the application involves

1. Fee waiver request first, on the online form for applications outside the UK, with six months of bank statements for every adult in the household, payslips or benefits letters, rent or mortgage, council tax, utilities, childcare, debts, medical evidence and any money sent abroad. Third-party help counts against you if it is regular and reliable, and must be explained if it is not.
2. Decision and token. If the waiver is granted you receive a code and must submit the visa application within 28 days. Miss it and the code lapses.
3. The visa application itself, with the relationship evidence, the accommodation evidence, the English test, the TB test where required, and the exceptional circumstances case set out in a covering letter with the supporting documents.
4. Biometrics at the visa application centre, then the Home Office decision. Family applications from abroad take up to 12 weeks as standard and are often longer where exceptional circumstances are argued. Priority services cannot be bought with a fee waiver.

A refused fee waiver is not an immigration decision, so there is no appeal or administrative review. The options are a new request with better evidence, or a pre-action letter and judicial review where the refusal is wrong in law. A refused visa carries a right of appeal on human rights grounds.

Our advice before you start

We will tell you at the free call whether your case has a realistic chance. Where it does not, we say so, and look at whether the income rule can be met another way: savings, a second job, the sponsor's return to the UK ahead of the application, or waiting for a change in circumstances. Where it does, we prepare the fee waiver request and the visa application as one case.

Our fees

Fee waiver request: £1,000 plus VAT, fixed. The visa application is quoted separately once the waiver is decided, from £1,000 plus VAT. No fee waiver applies to our fees, but we take instalments on these cases.

Questions people ask