Latest Home Office travel document timescales grid now available via BID Freedom of Information Act request, August 2014
Every year BID asks the Home Office to disclose its guidance on timescales to obtain travel documents by country.
This guidance document for Home Office staff contains information whether a European Union (EU) letter or Emergency Travel Document (ETD) is required for return, the minimum documentary requirements for an ETD, timescales for production of an ETD if original evidence is available, if only copy evidence is available, or no evidence is available at all.
The guidance disclosed by the Home Office to BID is dated August 2014, and is titled ‘Country Returns Documentation Guide’.
The format of this document has changed slightly since the August 2013 and earlier versions known as the ‘RDGU Country Reference Guide’. Both of these documents are available for download below.
The Home Office has redacted the following columns for the first time, from left to right on the document:
- 'Current country information' This column contained information such as, for Angola, "Face to face interview is required at the Embassy on Wednesdays. CROS Africa 1 will arrange. Verification checks in country may be initiated".
- 'Unused ETD pool'. This column contained a number, presumably relating to the number of unused ETDs obtained by the Home Office. The number of unused ETDs was a focus of a recent inspection by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders & Immigration of the ETD process within the Home Office
- 'ETD agreements'. This column contained a number.
The column 'Current likelihood of ETD agreement' is not listed on this document, though it has always been included in previous versions of this document and the contents redacted.
It may be of interest to note that version of guidance disclosed to BID in August 2014 the Home Office no longer offers timescales for Algerian travel documents, whether with or without evidence, whereas in the guidance disclosed in August 2014 there were suggested timescales.
You can download the 2014 version of the Home Office document and the version disclosed in August 2013 from the very bottom of the right hand column on this page, or contact [email protected]
