Carter Thomas Solicitors

Overview, processes and pricing

We work with education providers, businesses and individuals based across the UK and overseas, providing legal advice on all UK immigration law issues.

Our objective is to deliver immigration solutions that will help you to achieve your wider personal and commercial goals with confidence. We will also provide high-level strategic advice when necessary, ensuring right from the start that business plans or investment ideas, strategies to grow international student numbers or decisions to relocate for study, work or family reasons are going to be achievable.

In addition to our advisory services, we can prepare and file detailed leave to enter or remain applications for you and your family (individual clients) or your various sponsor licence related applications (businesses and education providers). We can also help you if you find that you are in an unexpected or difficult situation having, for instance, been refused entry to the UK or because your sponsor licence is at risk. We can prepare robust responses, appeals and challenges and we have immediate access to leading barristers as necessary.

UK immigration and nationality law cases – information about pricing
We are very proud that clients we act for have been so satisfied with the quality of our work that their feedback has led to us being consistently ranked as a leading UK law firm in The Legal 500, Chambers and Partners, Who’s Who Legal, The Times Best Law Firms and many other independent legal directories.

As Home Office and other immigration related costs (IHS etc.) have increased significantly in recent years, we’ve taken steps to ensure that our legal fees remain cost effective for our clients. We will always provide a traditional face-to-face London-based service to clients who require it. More recently, operating alongside this traditional service, we also have a team of specialists based in our offices in the heart of Sheffield’s thriving digital community who deliver our leading immigration services to clients across the UK and across the world.

Our clients are already benefitting from our modern, innovative and flexible approach which means we can deliver excellent results at a lower cost to them than many of our competitors.

We’ve set out our fee guidelines below and this information relates to our fees and processes for our work for individual clients. For information on our fees and processes for businesses, education providers, charities and other organisations, please contact us.

Types of cases
The information below covers the following applications and cases:

• all types of application for entry clearance (also known as visas), leave to enter the UK and leave to remain in the UK (leave means immigration permission);
• all types of application for indefinite leave to remain in the UK (also known as settlement and permanent residence);
• all types of application to naturalise or register as a British citizen or for an assessment of eligibility;
• all types of application under EU law and the EU Settled Status Scheme;
• all administrative reviews and appeals to the First-tier Tribunal.

If you need advice on a matter that is not covered above (for example, an asylum case or Judicial Review application), please contact us for a specific quote.

Once you have contacted us we will carry out an initial complimentary assessment to determine if your matter falls into our standard or non-standard service range, depending on the type of case and/or on your own preferences. Once we have done that, if it is possible for us to provide you with a fixed fee quote within the below general ranges we will do so. If we cannot offer a fixed fee, we will provide you with a narrower fee estimate, within the below general ranges.

Typical fee ranges
Our fees for the above types of cases fall into three main categories:

Standard cases – the vast majority of our cases can be dealt with on a standard basis. It is likely that, on average, we will spend from 3 to 15 hours working on your case, preparing the documentation, the relevant forms and a detailed cover letter and arranging the filing of the case. The hourly rates for the key members of our immigration team who carry out the main work on applications are currently £200 – £450 per hour.

Our fees for a standard case are typically between £600 – £3,000. For the majority of applications, we will be able to provide you with a fixed fee quote between this range.

Non-standard cases – these are cases where there may be unusual complexities, where you may require a specific senior advisor or partner to lead on the case or where there are other circumstances to be taken into account that mean the case cannot be dealt with as a standard case.

Our fees for a non-standard case are typically between £3,000 – £7,500. If you have already completed so much preparatory work on your case that we can bring it into our standard case fee range, we will.

Enhanced services – we also offer enhanced services to clients covering, for example, travel to the client’s home (within the UK or abroad), meeting or communicating extensively with third parties (financial advisers, accountants, etc.) on the client’s behalf, out of hours and on-call assistance, etc. If you would like further information about our enhanced services, please contact us.

Your specific quote
Once we have carried out an initial assessment of your case we will provide you with a specific fixed fee quote or, of this is not possible, an estimate. We will take into account a number of factors such as:

• the complexity of the specific legislation and evidential requirements, as set by the UK Government, relating to the specific category of application you wish to make. For example, some applications such as Intra-Company Transfer can be relatively straightforward (providing you do not have an adverse immigration history or convictions) and would fall under the lower end of our standard fee range. For other types of application, a significant amount of evidence must be collated, reviewed and filed;
• the volume and quality of supporting evidence we are likely to need to request from you to support your application which we will need to consider in detail;
• any problems you or your family members may have experienced with immigration or criminal law in the UK or elsewhere in the world;
• the number of dependants, if any, applying with you.

There may be occasions where factors relating to your case are so unusual or complex that we need to depart from our usual fee ranges. If so, we will let you know before you complete our client engagement process and you can choose whether to proceed or not. These situations occur very rarely.

Services that are included
When we are working on your case, our service will typically involve:

• taking detailed instructions from you (typically 0.5 – 2 hours);
• considering your circumstances in detail and advising you on the most appropriate way forward (typically 0.5 – 2 hours);
• giving you advice about the specific legal requirements that will need to be met and whether your case is likely to meet the criteria (typically 0.5 – 2 hours);
• initial and subsequent requests for information and evidence from you and analysing this (typically 0.5 – 7 hours);
• advising you on any aspects of the case that may need to be strengthened (typically 0.5 – 5 hours);
• preparing the case and arranging for the relevant documents and forms to be filed (typically 0.5 – 5 hours);
• notifying you of the outcome of the case and any further steps you need to take (typically 0.5 – 2 hours);
• if relevant, attending interviews or appeal hearings with you (typically 1 – 20 hours).

VAT, Home Office fees and other disbursements
We are required to charge VAT on our fees, where applicable. The rate of VAT is currently set at 20%.

Many cases also incur disbursements. These are costs related to the matter that are payable to third parties, such as visa fees. Where possible, we will request funds from you in advance so we can pay disbursements on your behalf to ensure a smoother process.

The most frequent disbursements our clients pay relate to the following, but not all of these will be applicable to your case:

• Home Office fees and fees for premium filing services;
• the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS);
• document translation;
• counsel’s fees;
• Tribunal fees.

On some occasions, depending on the matter, the following disbursements may also apply:

• Travel related expenses such as mileage, train fares, taxis etc.
• Independent expert reports e.g. medical experts. These are not required in many cases and we will let you know as soon as possible if we consider an expert report is necessary.

We do not perform asylum work on a regular basis and we do not therefore use interpreters often. If we do need to instruct an interpreter on your matter, we will provide you with quotes in advance for such services.

How long will the case take?
Some clients work very efficiently and can provide us with documents and information we need quickly. We will prepare your case within a day or so of receiving the final pieces of information or evidence we have requested from you. During the case-preparation stage, we will always strive to reply to you within 48 hours during the working week and we will proactively keep you up to date on the progress of your case.

Once the case is filed with the authorities (i.e. the Home Office or the tribunal, in the case of an appeal), the processing time falls under their rules. The Home Office is now able to process many immigration applications very quickly – sometimes on the same day if you pay for one of their enhanced services. Unfortunately for other types of cases, it can take much longer and sometimes several months.

Other options – application reviews and general advice
If you have prepared your case and just need one of our experts to review it before you file it, we charge a fixed fee of £650 for standard applications or £850 for complex applications, plus VAT where applicable, to review the application and provide you with advice on whether or not it is likely to be successful, according to the Immigration Rules.

In you require any of the following services, our fee will be a minimum of £300 plus VAT (where applicable). We will provide a specific quote once we know your requirements.

• you are preparing your own case, but are unsure if a specific aspect of it meets the requirements of the Immigration Rules;
• you need preliminary advice to assess if you/your dependants may meet the requirements of the Immigration Rules;
• you require some general advice.

Unfortunately we are unable to offer a free information/advisory service.

Contact us
If you require immigration legal advice please contact us or you can make an enquiry here.

You can find information about our key contacts here.

Please note that our fee ranges may be revised from time to time.