Bring family members to the UK — children, parents or dependent relatives — under whichever family route applies to your circumstances.
If you are trying to bring your child, your parent or a dependent relative to the UK, you are probably worried about two separate things: whether the rules even allow it, and what it will cost you to find out. Both worries are reasonable. The family routes are not one visa. They are several. A child joining a parent. A parent of a child who is here. An adult relative who needs long-term care. Each has its own test, and applying under the wrong one is the most expensive mistake available on this route, because the fee does not come back. We will tell you which route genuinely fits your family. If the honest answer is that your case is very difficult, you will hear that too, before you have spent anything.
This is a general guide only; we confirm your exact position at the free consultation.
A free consultation to identify the family route that fits your circumstances
A document checklist prepared around your circumstances
Preparation of your application and the representations that support it
Your review and sign-off before anything is submitted
Support with submission, and regular updates on progress
The rules ask something different depending on who is applying.
These are genuinely different tests. Evidence that would win one of them can be beside the point in another. Before you gather a single document, it is worth half an hour confirming which route you are actually on, and that is what the free consultation is for. You can also run your circumstances through our free eligibility checker first, at no cost and without giving us anything.
Here is the part that surprises most people. These applications usually fail on the form the evidence takes, not on whether the family relationship is real.
A sponsor whose income comfortably met the requirement still gets refused because the payslips did not match the bank statements, or because a statement fell outside the period the rules specify. The caseworker is not being cruel. They are working through a checklist, and they will not contact you to ask for the page you left out.
Every one of these is fixable before submission. None of them is cheap to fix afterwards.
This route is narrow on purpose, and you deserve to know that before you spend money on it.
It is not enough to show that your mother or father would be better off living with you, or that you would rather care for them yourself than pay someone else to. You have to show that the care they need cannot be obtained where they are, including care that could be paid for with help from you.
We will not take your fee to file an application we can already see failing. If your relative's circumstances do not meet that test, we will tell you at the consultation, explain exactly what the test requires, and tell you what would have to change. That conversation costs you nothing.
If your relative's situation does meet the test, the case has to be built around medical and care evidence from the very beginning, not assembled afterwards from whatever documents happen to exist. That is a different piece of work, and it is the one worth paying for.
Family cases are where quoted prices vary most wildly, because a firm charging by the hour genuinely cannot tell you in advance how many hours your case will take. Published rates for a spouse or partner application in the UK run from around £1,500 to £5,400. Many firms charge £300 to £500 plus VAT before they have even looked at your papers.
We charge £500 per application. Fixed. That does not change if your case turns out to be complicated, and it does not change if it takes longer than we expected. The first consultation is free.
On top of our fee you will pay the Home Office application fee, the health surcharge where it applies, and any cost of translating civil documents or obtaining medical reports. Those are third-party costs. They are not ours, they change from time to time, and we give you the current figures in writing rather than a guess. You can model the whole thing yourself with our cost calculator before you speak to anyone.
You book a free consultation. We ask about your family, your own status here, and your relative's circumstances. By the end of it you will know which route applies to you, what evidence you will need to gather, roughly how long it takes, and what the whole thing will cost, ours and the government's.
If we can help, we prepare the application, you approve every word before anything is submitted, and we stay with it until the decision arrives. If we cannot help, or the route is not realistic for you yet, we will say so.
We are regulated by the Immigration Advice Authority. Please check us on the public register before you instruct anyone. Giving immigration advice in the UK without authorisation is a criminal offence, and an adviser outside that register offers you no way of recovering your money. That test applies to us as much as to anybody else.
We do not handle appeals, administrative reviews or tribunal work, and we do not make promises about outcomes.
Usually yes, if you are British, settled, or hold a qualifying status, and you can show the parental relationship along with either sole responsibility or serious and compelling reasons. What you need to prove changes depending on where the other parent is, so tell us that early in the conversation.
It means you are the one directing your child's upbringing, including decisions about school, health and welfare, rather than simply the one sending money. It is proved with records built up over years: school correspondence, medical decisions, travel, transfers and messages. A single signed statement will not carry it.
There is a route for adult dependent relatives, but it is deliberately narrow. You must show your parent needs long-term personal care and that suitable care is genuinely unavailable or unaffordable where they live. We will give you an honest view of your prospects before you spend anything on it.
It depends on the route. Some family applications require your UK sponsor to meet a set financial threshold. Others apply a different test, of whether the family can be adequately supported. The figures are set by the government and change, so we confirm which test applies to you and what the current numbers are at your consultation.
Birth or marriage certificates, with certified translations where they are not in English, passports and immigration histories, and evidence that the relationship has continued over time: money sent, calls and messages, visits, and decisions taken together.
No. That is the partner route, which has its own requirements around the relationship, income and English language. See our spouse and partner visa page.
Several of them do, though the qualifying period differs by route and by the applicant's age and circumstances. We set out the expected path to Indefinite Leave to Remain at the start, so you are not surprised by it years later.
No, and it is a common situation. What matters is that you present the evidence that does exist clearly, and explain the gaps yourself, rather than leaving a caseworker to draw their own conclusion about why something is missing.
Book your free 30-minute consultation for a straightforward, honest assessment of your matter.