The Home Office has recently introduced a service to facilitate faster entry through passport control for citizens over the age of 18 from the US, Australia, Japan, Canada and New Zealand. The Home Office communications department has been gradually communicating this new service over the past few weeks to any applicants from eligible countries who have previously provided an e-mail address to the Home Office.
The service is known as the 'Registered Traveller' service. It costs £70 to register and purports to provide the following benefits:
* Access to ePassport gates at airports across the country (if you have a biometric passport) * Use of the UK / EU queue at specified ports * A dedicated Registered Traveller lane at Gatwick Airport * Faster entry lanes at Edinburgh, Gatwick, Glasgow, Heathrow, London City, Manchester and Stansted airports, and Brussels, Lille and Paris Eurostar terminals * Not needing to complete a landing card on arrival to the UK * No credibility interview with a Border Force officer.
In order to be eligible to register for the service, you must either have a visa already (but not a Tier 5 concession (Creative and sporting), EEA family permit, discretionary leave or leave outside the rules) or you must have visited the UK 4 times in the last 52 weeks for business, education, tourism, education or medical treatment.
If you are interested in signing up for this service you can do so here.
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