Visa For France: Two Fingers to Brexit

Ever since the UK’s withdrawal agreement from the EU came into force at the start of 2021 the rights of UK citizens to travel freely throughout Europe were ended. This meant that instead of being able to tour indefinitely in Europe UK citizens are restricted to the standard Schengen terms of 90 days in any rolling 180 day period.

So unless you are married to an EU citizen or can get an European passport the 90 days of Schengen will limit your ability to travel through Europe.

There is one route to spend longer in Europe however as the French offer a specific Long Stay visa for Tourists which allows for access to France outside of the Schengen rules. This is the VLS-T visa (Visa de Long Sejour Temporaire).

This visa allows up to 6 months stay in France.

There is also the VLS-TS visa (Visa de Long Séjour-Titre de Séjour) which allows a stay of up to 12 months. This requires health insurance to be purchased and any stay in France in a calendar year of over 6 months also requires the declaration of worldwide income and potentially paying French tax.

We decided to apply for the VLS-T visa to allow us to travel into France for 6 months. This is a multi-entry visa and health insurance can be evidenced by use of a GHIC card which Is available free from the UK authorities.

The process for applying for the Visa is complex and the online guidance can be confusing so I will run through the process that we followed. However there is a very good resource available at:

https://sites.google.com/view/180-days-in-france

The first step of the process is to go the French government website:

france-visas.gouv.fr

You must register here and each person in your party has to fill out a visa form and get a reference number. But do not submit this form yet.

You have to go the website of a service company in the UK called TLS-Contact:

https://fr.tlscontact.com/gb/splash.php

On this website a form needs to be filled out for each applicant and then an appointment for a face-to-face meeting booked. There only needs to be one appointment made per group as you can do it together.

Only when an appointment has been made with TLS can you go back to the French visa site and submit the application.

During the online application process you also need to make payment for the Visa fee which is £31.

TLS have three UK centres – one in Wandsworth in London, one in Manchester and one in Edinburgh. You have to attend one of these centres. The Wandsworth centre was known to us and actually was walking distance from where we used to live so we chose this one.

The first booking we were able to get was 3 weeks in the future and this took a couple of days to get because the website was suffering reliability problems.

Once the forms are submitted and the appointment is booked you need to spend some time getting a number of documents ready to hand over at the meeting. You will need each document per person and you will also need 2 copies of each one.

Documents for TLS

1. Promise Not To Work

A short letter confirming that you do not intend to work. Signed and dated

• Project Plan

A short letter describing the reason for wanting the Visa. This had two sections. The first we titled Purpose and simply stated that we intended to tour France for Touristic purposes. The second section, The Plan, we stated that we intended to tour in our motorhome and gave a very brief overview of start date and return date, and rough plan eg. Start in Normandy, travel through the centre to Alps, on to the south and then back up West coast. This was signed and dated.

We did not list any place we would stay other than the first night campsite booking and to state that we would stay in aires and campsites throughout the country.

• GHIC

A photocopy of your GHIC card or other alternative health insurance. An old EHIC Card can still be used but do check that it doesn’t expire. These can no longer be applied for.

• Proof of Income

Documentary proof of income or resources to support yourself during the period of the visa.

The requirement for income or resources is £2,000/month for a couple of £1,200 for a single person.

3 months bank statements must be shown.

So we decided to each show a bank account with the required minimum amount (our joint account) and also to document income to exceed the £2,000 per month. This was done with a letter listing the income items and referencing these to the bank statement. We did this to make it very easy for anyone reviewing to see the income receipts in the bank statement and be able to easily go from the summary to the primary documents. We did not show any additional financial details beyond those we thought were necessary to obtain the visa.

• Passport Photos

Two passport photos for each person. We used a photo booth which is in Wandsworth Southside shopping centre (there are two which are just passed the entrance to Waitrose). The format to select is the standard UK passport format. We had no problems with these being accepted although be careful to ensure that your hair does not cover your eyebrows as they were insistent that this was important. There is also a photo machine within the TLS centre but this might have a long queue or be broken when you visit. Leave the photos uncut as the TLS staff have a nifty cutter of precisely the right size for their needs.

• Address in France

The process is designed for people who will be staying at a single place in France for the duration of the visa. As we were intending to tour around by motorhome and had no real set itinerary we booked a campsite for out first night and used this address. This was perfectly acceptable and caused no problems. No other addresses were provided beyond this first night.

The other side of our address though was our motorhome which we had referenced in our Project Plan. We provided the invoice of purchase of the motorhome (our V5 has not arrived yet) and our insurance schedule showing insurance for Europe.

The TLS Visit

We arrived at TLS 5 minutes before are appointment time. We were met at the door by a security guard who asked to see 1 copy of an appointment confirmation. He checked this and let us in through a metal detector.

We then had to queue at a reception desk and show our passports and the copy of our TLS form (printed from the website). The person at the desk put these in a plastic folder and told us to move to the next room.

The next room is a waiting room with rows of seats in front of monitor screens which have a list of reference numbers being currently called and the desk to go to. Once your number appears you go to the appropriate desk number.

We waited just over 30 minutes for our number to come up and made our way to the desk where we were greeted by a very friendly and helpful lady.

This lady had to go through each of our documents and place it into each of our plastic folders. Where something on the form needed changing she was happy to make the changes in the system and also photocopied our marriage certificate which she didn’t think our copy of was good enough.  We were standing at this desk for almost half an hour to go through all the documents and get them situated in the right order in our folders. This person also takes payment of the processing fee for the Visa which is £87 per person. This is based on a Euro amount so can fluctuate a bit.

Once this was complete we were handed our folders which has been sealed and told to move to the next room.

The next room is another waiting room for the biometrics. We were directed to sit down near the front and after only waiting a couple of minutes were called up to join another queue outside one of the biometrics rooms.

On being called in (individually) you hand over your folder and sit down to have a photo taken and then your finger prints. This only takes a couple of minutes. Your folder is then retained and you are done.

In total it took us 2 hours from arriving at TLS to departing.

When you leave you have handed over your passport and are told that they will let you know when your passport is back. We had our TLS meeting on a Friday and were emailed that our passport was back on the following Wednesday. They don’t tell you whether you have been successful or not at this stage.

TLS can courier your passport back to you for an additional charge but we elected to collect our passports from TLS in Wandsworth.

To collect you need to take photo ID (we used our driving licences) and to have a photocopy of this. We arrived at the collection point – the building opposite where you went for your TLS meeting – showed the security guard our photo id (and copy) and went to the desk at the front where we were given back our passports.

We’d got our visas starting on our requested start date and finishing 6 months later. Hurrah !

Getting to Wandsworth TLS

By Car: The best place to park is in the Waitrose/Southside car park which is off Garret Lane. This is pay parking and you pay when you leave. It is a five minute walk to the TLS centre.

By Public Transport: If you travel by train to Clapham junction then get a bus from the other side of the road from the station to Wandsworth (10 minutes) – use 37,337, 170,156. Both the 170 and 156 drop you directly opposite the Ram Brewery development where TLS is situated.

Alternatively on the tube both East Putney and Southfields are about a 20 minute walk away or Wandsworth town train station (10 minute walk).