No more offshore frontloaded medicals from May06 applicant 521

Mez and Joe

Hi Mez & Joe

My elderly, disabled mother is an applicant for a Contributory Parent visa and is hopefully now within 6-8 weeks of the Grant. The POPC looks after most Parents, as I have mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Although the legal criteria for CP visas are different from those for send visas (obviously) the medical criteria are exactly the same.

Because Mum is disabled due to a severe spinal-chord injury a few years ago which affects her mobility, plus she is nearly 86, I have been through the medico-legal criteria for these Australian visas with the finest of toothcombs.

The ASPC and the LCU (which handles the meds for most of not all of the send visas) are very much a hugely impersonal conveyor belt because they handle so many different visas and so many applications for them. The pace of life is much gentler with the POPC, with an infinitely more personal service.

Last November, before making Mum's application, I was pretty sure she would be OK on her meds in spite of being disabled. However, the processing period for CP applications is 9-12 months. My mother wanted to spend most of the processing period with my sister in Oz, for which she would need a visitor visa as well.

So far so good. The London website that you have both seen the link to fairly howls about not doing anything about the meds until requested. I had visions of Mum being stuck in the UK for months on end, awaiting the Request.

That wouldn't do, so I e-mailed the POPC explaining Mum's wishes and asking how long it would be before they would be likely to ask her to go for the meds. I also explained that since people of 70 or over also require a Medical Cert in connection with a tourist-visa, which their own GP is supposed to provide, I could see me having to drag an old dear in a wheelchair to one doctor after another, which might delay her departure for Oz even more.

Within 24 hours, the POPC replied. The guy suggested getting Mum's meds done for the main visa as soon as we wished, and he suggested that I should ask the Panel Doctor to complete the Med Cert for the tourist-visa at the same time. This was so utterly NOT what the London website says that I immediately phoned the POPC for a chat with the CO who had responded to me.

Was he sure he was right? He said casually, "Yep. The meds are normally valid for a year. CP visas are only taking about 9 months to process. Get a panel doctor to do the meds for the main visa, get him to do the Cert for the tourist visa at the same time, submit the two applications simultaneously and we can get your mother out to Oz for her visit very quickly I should think."

So that is what we did. It all worked exactly as the POPC guy had predicted. It could well be that the POPC is more flexible than the ASPC-LCU, but they are working to the same *legal * rules as all the others. Sure, with less pressure on the staff, they can take the time to offer a more personal service, with more tailor-making to suit the applicant, but I reckon there is a LOT more 'give' in this system than Agents (and indeed the DIMA scriptwriters) make out. The POPC process their own meds, though, and the LCU is not involved with Parents in any way.

For details of the LCU and the visa-meds they handle, please see here:

Cheers

Gill