A Post on Applying for the UK Tier 1 Global Talent Visa
This is a write up for how I successfully applied for the UK's Tier 1 Exceptional Talent visa. It offers UK residence for up to 5 years, with the possibility of permanent residence at the end.
Tier 1, Tier 1 exceptional talent, uk visa, visa, immigration, united kingdom, home office
51666
post-template-default,single,single-post,postid-51666,single-format-standard,eltd-core-1.2.1,extensive-vc-1.9.1,borderland-theme-ver-2.5,ajax_fade,page_not_loaded,smooth_scroll,paspartu_enabled,paspartu_on_bottom_fixed,transparent_content,evc-predefined-style,wpb-js-composer js-comp-ver-7.5,vc_responsive

A Comprehensive Post on Applying for the Global Talent (formerly Tier 1 Exceptional Talent) UK Visa

UPDATE TO TIER 1 20 OCTOBER 2020:

• Since posting this, the Tier 1 (Exceptional Talent) has been renamed Global Talent.

• I am leaving the guide below unchanged from the time of my original posting (January 2019) for a few reasons:

1) the general process for the application is unchanged, and this guide can help with understanding how to put together the endorsement package, and

2) I can only speak for my experience of the process during the time which I applied. UK immigration is notorious for sudden and frequent changes, which is why it is always best to check their guidance. Global talent guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-on-applications-under-global-talent

Table of Contents

Introduction

I mentioned on Twitter that I would do a write-up on how I successfully applied for the UK’s Tier 1 (Exceptional Talent) visa. This is a route to UK residency for experts in certain specialised fields. The “talents” encompass a number of different areas: literature, tech, architecture, fashion, theatre, film, and more. It’s a highly desirable visa due to its flexibility (few work restrictions), and because you can apply for permanent residency (known as ILR — Indefinite Leave to Remain) in the UK after 3 years for Exceptional Talent applicants, and after 5 years for Exceptional Promise applicants.

It’s also daunting, for several reasons:

  • It’s one of the most difficult visas to qualify for. The Home Office capped this category at 2,000 people for the whole year, across all disciplines. Arts Council England, the endorsing body for my visa, is guaranteed 250 spaces. As far as I know, that yearly cap has never been reached.
  • As a result, there’s less information online about this visa category than any other, particularly for those not in the tech field.
  • The monetary requirement is extremely high. If you decide to apply, and get a refusal at any stage, you do not get your money back.

I’ve found two other in-depth write ups for those applying in other areas: Here’s a great one for tech, and here’s a great one for theatre. This write up is intended for authors, but my hope is that people in other disciplines are able to use it as an additional guide for their own applications.

A Few Clarifications

  • I lived in the UK for 9 continuous years prior to applying for this visa. So a huge part of my application was:
    • Showing proof that I already have an emerging writing career in the UK.
    • Justifying continued residence in the country.
  • I am not a solicitor. I can’t aid in individual applications for people I don’t know. I am only writing this from my own personal experience.
  • I am writing this as of January 2019, and Arts Council England just updated their eligibility requirements this month. Immigration rules and requirements change all the time, so please make sure you check current requirements against this guide.
  • I am not an expert in other disciplines, nor am I familiar with the guidelines required of the other endorsing bodies, such as Tech Nation, the Royal Society, etc. They have their own set of guidelines and requirements that are separate from Arts Council England, the designated competent body that endorsed my visa.

The Guidelines

First, let’s pull up the guidelines from Arts Council England. There are a few important things you might miss, so take your time and read again.

So if you’re not a New York Times bestseller moving massive units of books, that’s OK. You can still apply for a Tier 1 under the Exceptional Promise category, which is for those who are still at the start of their career. This is the category I applied for.

Let’s continue.

You need to be a working professional in order to apply. You need to show them you’ve already established your career, or you’re in the process of establishing your career. If you’re about five years out of commission, get some work under your belt, and keep this route bookmarked.

The Criteria

Now that you know who can apply for the visa (hopefully you!), let’s take a look at Arts Council England’s criteria for what you need (this is up to date as of January 2019).

These are general guidelines that encompass a number of different arts disciplines, so they’re written to be as broad as possible. It’s ultimately up to the Arts Council whether the evidence you’ve submitted fulfils their criteria.

I’m going to focus on the exceptional promise guidelines because this is the category I applied for.

Note that you only need to qualify for two of the above criteria. So if you’re unsure about one (I was uncertain about my awards nominations and the internationally recognised designation), then make sure you send strong evidence for the other two categories. They don’t have a list of awards for authors, but major awards like the Hugos, Nebulas, Morris, Booker would undoubtedly qualify.

If you absolutely qualify for all three categories, great! Definitely send proof of all three to increase your chances of obtaining endorsement.

As for me, I only showed proof for media recognition and publications. I excluded awards.

Evidence I Sent:

Tips: send scans rather than originals; include details (such as dates, country of publication, etc); and if you’re sending online articles then make sure the web address is in the screenshot.

Publications, etc:

The guidelines ask that exceptional promise applicants show a track record in one country, but they place a huge emphasis on everything having an international reputation. So I sent evidence to prove that my work is recognised in more than one country — and put particular emphasis on my existing recognition in the UK.

  • Evidence 1: Front and back matter of the US Edition of The Falconer. Including country of publication, publisher, release date, and ISBN.
  • Evidence 2: Front and back matter of the UK edition of The Vanishing Throne. Also including country of publication, publisher, release date, and ISBN.
  • Evidence 3: Front and back matter for the UK edition of The Fallen Kingdom. Again, including country of publication, publisher, release date, and ISBN.
  • Evidence 4: Screen shot from the Hachette author portal showing my book’s distribution across the world, including sales numbers listed by country. Not sure this was entirely needed (since it says publications or international distribution), but again: I wanted to show proof of international demand for my work.
  • Evidence 5: screen shot from the Amazon Author Central geographical map, which gets its numbers from NPD Bookscan, showing where my books have sold in US cities. Again, not sure this was needed, but I wanted to be thorough.

SIDE TIP: I was fortunate that my UK publisher, Gollancz (a subsidiary of Hachette), provides sales transparency for their authors. If you don’t have access to international distribution numbers, you can:

  • Focus your application on publications (particularly if you have international editions!).
  • If you’ve participated on panels at industry conferences, those qualify as appearances! Send proof of your participation.

Media Recognition

The guidelines state the article must provide critique of your work, which is a bit aggravating. I had some fantastic spreads in mainstream UK publications that I left out because, even though they were lengthy interviews about my work, they didn’t include a critique.

Here’s what I sent:

  • Evidence 7: SciFiNow review of The Falconer (this was a physical magazine, so I included a scan of both the cover and the page of the feature). Also listed the issue number, page number of the feature, country of origin, and publishing date.
  • Evidence 9: The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books‘s review of The Vanishing Throne. This was another scanned copy, so I included the cover, along with the page itself. I also included the volume number, the edition number, country of origin, publishing date, distribution publisher, and the page numbers of the feature.

So that’s it for the evidence section. Remember: keep it to 10 pieces; they will disregard anything more than 10. The goal here is quality, not quantity.

Something you might wonder: what is considered a single piece of evidence? What I gathered is that a piece of evidence comes from one source. So if you have a review, for example, that’s five pages long — that’s one piece of evidence.

Clarification: when I researched evidence online, I saw a few applicants mention sending in thick envelopes with over 50 pages or a box full of pages to the Arts Council. If you’re sending reviews published in magazines, I highly recommend scanning only the cover and pages that mention your work to keep the page count to a minimum.

My envelope held 22 pages. That included the letters of support and the application checklist. So don’t panic if you’re sending in a slim envelope. It’s not the number of pages that matter; it’s what you’re sending.

Letters of Support

They want you to have supporting statements from people who are experts in your field or part of internationally recognised organisations. Let’s look at the criteria.

(Read more here about the content of the letters, and what should be included).

They can’t just be letters from your amazing author friends. Two of the letters must come from the heads of literary organisations. One has to be the head of an organisation in the UK. And, finally, the last can be from your magnificent, successful author friend.

Realistically, this part is all about networking. Networking is a part of the arts profession; they want people who will continue to do this in the UK.

I had it easy. My agent is the president of his literary agency in New York; my co-author’s agent is the CEO of her literary agency in London, and I have a terrific working relationship with the folks at my UK publisher, Gollancz, so my editor there wrote a letter for me. If someone was unavailable to write these letters, I had a list of people I could ask.

To help the people I asked to write letters of support, I drafted a large document with:

  • the official requirements from Arts Council England.
  • A bullet pointed list of my career:
    • Everything I have accomplished in the last 5 years of my career.
    • The books I have under contract right now (particularly with my UK publisher).
    • Media I’ve been featured in and what they’ve said about my work.
    • Awards/honours I’ve been recognised for.
    • What I hope to accomplish in the UK, why I wanted to be there, and why I would benefit from (continued) residence. I specifically talked about how Scotland has inspired my work and which future UK conferences I wanted to attend. I also focused on my upcoming book, Seven Devils, which I begin promoting next year with Gollancz.

Tip: carefully review these letters of support to make sure they include everything the Arts Council asks for (including small details like date, visa category, contact info, etc).

Timeline: Stage One

The average processing time for Stage 1 (the endorsement part) is about a month. They tell you it will be up to 25 working days from when the application is forwarded to Arts Council England. My info:

  • Sent documents: October 30, 2018
  • Received email that documents were forwarded to Arts Council England (here’s when the 25 working days starts): Nov 7
  • Notice of endorsement: December 10

I hope it’s yes for you! If it’s a yes, then you go onto stage 2, which is the actual visa application itself.

Stage 2 – The Visa Application

Once you have received endorsement, UK Immigration performs the mandatory check to make sure you don’t fall under their general guidelines for refusal. This is basically a background check.

A point of confusion in the application itself:

  • It asks where in the UK you want to pick up your biometric residence card. If you’re applying out of country, this is because the visa put into your passport from the consulate is only a 30 day entry clearance. You pick up your long term visa (the residence card) from the place you designate here. If you’re uncertain where you’ll end up, put in someplace near the hotel or AirB&B you’ll be staying in upon arrival.

I applied in the United States (the UK visa I was on wouldn’t allow me to switch categories while in the country), and here’s what I included in the application:

  • Current passport
  • Previous passport (new applicants won’t need this; recall that I’ve been a resident in the UK for 9 years)
  • My UK residence card (again, new applicants won’t have this. I included it because I was switching visas)
  • Printed Tier 1 application
  • Stamped biometrics letter
  • Printed letter of endorsement from the Arts Council
  • A self-addressed return envelope with prepaid overnight delivery.

Stage 2 Timeline

Processing time for Stage Two depends on the country you’re sending from. I sent my visa application to the UKVI Scanning Hub in New York, and just went with standard processing (if you can afford priority, I hear it’s very quick). Here is my timeline (affected by Christmas/New Year’s):

Application sent: December 18, 2018

Biometrics scheduled: December 21

Sent documents off: December 21

Documents arrived in New York (according to tracking): December 24

Confirmation email from the Home Office: December 27

Date the decision was made: January 14, 2019

Date passport was received: January 15

Final Tips, Thoughts, and Important Links

On Solicitors:

Some people might find it easier to hire a solicitor to handle their application and reduce some of the stress, particularly if English gives them difficulty. It’s an additional cost that’s ultimately up to you. I decided to do this alone.

Read carefully.

The Home Office has put everything you need to know online. Arts Council England and the Home Office will be following the same guidance as you.

Read thoroughly.

Familiarise yourself with the Tier 1 Exceptional Talent guidance.

Read Additional notes.

Arts Council England has some PDFs for you to download that expand on the official guidelines:

Scrutinise your own background.

For stage 2, the Home Office will be looking into you. This will, absolutely, include your social media posts.

Join the community.

If you’d like to commiserate with fellow UK visa applicants, ask for advice, or post your visa timeline to help others:

Follow the guidance perfectly.

Don’t give them any reason to question your application. Additional checks make this process take longer. You want it to be smooth and straightforward — not just for the people processing your application, but for your own peace of mind, as well.

Stay organised.

The best thing you can do is submit an application that is clean, well organised, clearly labelled, and easy to read. Make this a simple decision for the people going through your work. This isn’t an automated process; remember that there’s a human at the other end.

Be prepared to wait.

As you can see from my timelines, this is not a quick process. Between gathering your evidence and letters, Stage 1 assessment, and Stage 2 visa processing, this will take months. The wait is, frankly, agonisingly long. About 1 month per step:

  • 1 month to give your letter writers time to make their statements, to gather your 10 pieces of evidence, and to fill out the endorsement application. Do not rush this. Breathe. Take your time.
  • 1 month for Stage 1, possibly a little longer. The Home Office will be forwarding your application on to the designated competent body, and they only do this once a week. I had just missed that day when I sent my application in, so it had to wait for the following week to be forwarded to Arts Council England. Arts Council England says it takes 25 working days to process your application. Mine took 23.
  • 1 month for Stage 2. Hopefully it won’t take 4 weeks for them to process the visa, but I’d play it safe here just in case they have to make additional inquiries.

Best of luck to you all!

I’m rooting for you and wishing you an easy process.

All my love,