I submitted my priority settlement application on 24 December and received the Sheffield confirmation email on 28 December. On my application I just randomly chose and wrote 15 March as my intended travel day. Will this mean my visa application will not be approved or looked at until closer to then?
No, because they will not see what date you requested until AFTER they pick it up to make a decision.
Almost the entire processing time is your application sitting in line waiting for someone to pick it up and look at it. While it is waiting in line, no one knows what travel date you put.
I still have not heard anything back from UKVI, and I’m concerned I did myself over by not submitting a sooner travel date on my application.
You’re only on business day 17 today... that’s well within normal processing times for the December applications.
However, if you put a travel date of March 15th, your visa will likely start somewhere between March 8th and March 15th, even if it is processed in January... they are supposed to honour the travel date, since you only have 30 days to enter and you requested that your visa should start on that date... though lately they have been making the visa valid starting 7 days before the date you put.
So it may well be the case that even if you get your visa in January, you won’t be able to move to the UK until March anyway because the visa won’t be valid until then.
Ideally you want to put the earliest possible date you know you will be able to travel to the UK within 30 days of. If that date passes before the visa is granted (which happens often) then it will just be made valid from when the decision is made or a few days later.
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