The Lunar New Year is fast approaching. This event, which occurs at the beginning of the lunar calendar, is celebrated in many cultures, particularly those within East Asia. This festival will be celebrated between the 21st and 27th of January this year.
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.
Due to the recent Coronavirus outbreak in China we are expecting clients receiving and sending documents in the area to experience delays with the arrival of shipments. As some areas have been placed into quarantine and with travel restrictions widely in place this is affecting all forms of transport from air cargo to road transport and sea freight.
As of the 8th of November 2019, the process for legalising UK documents for use in China will be changing. Applications will now be submitted to the Chinese embassy via a Chinese Visa Application Service Centre in either London, Manchester or Edinburgh.
The visa centres have been introduced to reduce the administrative burden on the embassy by handling submitted applications. The embassy will still ultimately be issuing the attestation stamps to documents and will still be in charge of decision-making with respect to the eligibility of documents for legalisation.