Delays with Chinese Embassy Attestation
We are currently experiencing long delays with documents that are being submitted to the Chinese Embassy for attestation and legalisation. The latest information we have from the embassy is that documents will take at least 8 weeks to be legalised.
Unfortunately, this is something affecting all legalisation services and is not unique to us. There is no fast track, no way of expediting urgent orders.
Why is there a delay?
The Chinese Embassy closed in December for Christmas and did not reopen when the government implemented the lockdown in January 2021. The embassy remained closed for over 2 months and only reopened in March.
On reopening, the embassy began legalising documents on only 1 day each week. This has not cleared the backlog and only made the problem worse.
Towards the end of April, they announced that they would begin legalising documents on 2 days each week. We are hoping that this will begin to reduce the time it takes to process orders. However, as they have a large backlog of orders it remains to be seen if it will impact times scales.
We understand that this is very frustrating.
Dates on Documents
The Chinese Embassy insists that all documents have an apostille issued in the last 3 months. We are still waiting for documents to be returned from December and it is not clear if these will be legalised as the apostilles are now out of date.
Criminal record checks (ACRO, DBS, etc.) should only be 3 months old. The embassy does not normally legalise any that were issued more than 90 days ago. If a criminal record check was issued in January or February we are waiting to see if the embassy clears them in time or if any get returned to us.
We appreciate that the embassy has caused the documents to be ‘too old’ due to their own closure. These are the embassies rules and not ours.
In the event of documents being rejected due to the date of issue we will work with customers to provide new apostilles if the customer provides a new document.
Urgent orders
We are often asked by customers if we can expedite their order for a visa, work permit or for similar employment-related matters. The simple answer is no. All of the documents are now urgently needed. The embassy will not prioritise one document out of the thousands they are processing.
Your patience during these very difficult times is appreciated as we wait for the embassy to clear our backlog of orders.
Do not hesitate to contact us if you need any advice. Unfortunately, at this time, we can only confirm that documents are with the embassy awaiting legalisation.
