French 6 Month Visa Success Story/What We Did

[M and D]

Morning ,

I thought I'd post some details on here on how my partner and I got approved for a 6 month French visitor with the intention of travelling in a motorhome. We searched long and hard for some guidance on what to provide, but barring the posts from Dwarfland this month, we really struggled to get any concrete information.

What we did:

• We applied for a 91 day visa, thinking the shorter visa length would make it more likely to be approved. Even though we applied for 91 days, we were given a full 6 month visa.
• In the visa wizard when prompted for accommodation, we just put in a local campsite to where we would be staying. We had nothing booked on paper.
• We provided two cover letters:
  • One for the overall application stating our intention (travel around France, go climbing, etc).
  • One for the accommodation section. Stating that we had the required funds, a motorhome & every intention to stay on different campsites depending on where we were at the time. We said explicitly that we had nothing booked and would not book anything until we knew what the weather was going to be.
• We provided a single letter in both French & English that stated we would not work, we signed it in front of the TLS employee.
• We got a bit flappy over our socio economic status as we could not access our property title deed or our employment contract. We provided:
  • An unofficial copy of our property on the UK land register.
  • A copy of our companies house registry.
• The entire process, including travel to/from the TLS office, passport return via courier & the initial charges ended up at a little over £400 for 2 people.
• It took a little over 2 weeks to get our passports back with the visa. We got varied answers, but it sounds like 10-15 working days is pretty average.

I think the consulate themselves are fairly lax about British motorhomers, but the visa wizard & TLS process certainly doesn't cater for us very well.

The TLS staff weren't massively helpful in our case, either in-person or on the phone. When asked about how the visa & schengen allowance could be used in conjunction, we were told that "your French visa gives you access to the EU", "your French visa absolutely does not give you access to the EU" and "I don't know, just chance it?".

Hopefully some of the bits above are vaguely helpful for anyone else looking at applying for the visitor visa.

 

[Bessy765]

Hi, glad you got it sorted. Did you have to provide berth and marriage certificates? The reason for asking as we left ours in our French cottage by mistake and wondered if we would need them to get the long stay tourist visa. We have a property inFrance so the accommodation bit is covered, also a French bank account to cover funds required. Can your passports be returned via courier or do you have to go back to collect them. Sorry for all the questions.

 

[Puddleduck]

Hi, glad you got it sorted. Did you have to provide berth and marriage certificates? The reason for asking as we left ours in our French cottage by mistake and wondered if we would need them to get the long stay tourist visa. We have a property inFrance so the accommodation bit is covered, also a French bank account to cover funds required. Can your passports be returned via courier or do you have to go back to collect them. Sorry for all the questions.

It's very easy to get copy certificates from either the GRO (on line) or the registrar where the event took place. Quicker in my experience to use a local office but many of them have now shut.

You will need a full certificate not the cheaper .pdf one.

I get a lot of old certificates for family history research but two of mine were defaced then destroyed by my dopey ex-boss when we all had to prove we could work in the UK legally.

 

[M and D]

We did not have to provide birth of marriage certificates. We left our relationship status as "common law". They can return your passport via courier - we opted for that too and it took them 1 day from consulate -> TLS then 2 days from TLS -> us.

Our visa was a 6 month long stay tourist visa, however I think they're a bit more tetchy if you're going for the full 12 months (you need proper medical insurance, that sort of cruft).

We're actually in France now, the only other thing we learned is that you need to tell them to stamp your visa page on your passport - if they just stamp your standard entry page you're up shit creek.

 

[Purple2]

We did not have to provide birth of marriage certificates. We left our relationship status as "common law". They can return your passport via courier - we opted for that too and it took them 1 day from consulate -> TLS then 2 days from TLS -> us.

Our visa was a 6 month long stay tourist visa, however I think they're a bit more tetchy if you're going for the full 12 months (you need proper medical insurance, that sort of cruft).

We're actually in France now, the only other thing we learned is that you need to tell them to stamp your visa page on your passport - if they just stamp your standard entry page you're up shit creek.

That last bit is particularly good to know as I wondered how that would work

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