April 16 the British embassy formally notified about the changes in the procedure of applying for a visa to this country.
April 1, 2007 abolished the fee for processing applications. Tourist visa now costs 3280 rubles instead of 3500 rubles., Student – 5150 instead of 5320 rubles., Transit – 2290 instead of 2460 rubles. The second innovation, which is entered, according to the embassy to expedite the document requires to April 23, 2007 to fill a questionnaire to obtain British visas in English only, as is already the Australian Embassy, United States, Canada, New Zealand in Moscow.
As before, in support of an application must be submitted (but not photocopies) of documents, the latter must be accompanied by a translation in English, notarization is not yet required. Employees of the British visa centers, continue to be free to provide visitors information about the completeness and adequacy of sets of documents. And the latest innovation, which, in effect, cancels one of the recent innovations of the embassy. Visa centers open in Ufa, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Samara, May 1 will be closed because of low load. In Russia, there will only be 4 centers: in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk.
Now the British Embassy is working to improve their Internet and SMS services to help residents of Russian regions to obtain visa. According to the embassy, the demand for British visas for Russians to continue to grow: in 2007 it increased by 17% compared to the same period last year. During the year prior to February 28, 2007, 127 374 were filed statements. Only in March 2007 in Russia were filed nearly 16 thousand applications for registration of a British visa. However, these figures could be even greater if not failures, participation in companies that send tourists to the bus tours to the UK. According to CEO DSBW Karen Goncharova, visa denial reached 20%.
