Uk Eea Family Permit

[MaiChai]

I did a search for EEA family permit on the forum, and nothing came back. Thus, here is my question: I am British, and trawling through the British Embassy Bangkok site, I came across a catagory of visa called "EEA family permit". This is described as:

"The EEA family permit is a form of entry clearance issued free of charge for the purpose of allowing non-EEA dependants of an EEA national to travel to the UK.

It is advisable for them to apply well before the date they wish to travel to the UK to allow sufficient time to process their application."

So this implies that I could get one of these stamped in my wife and eldest daughters passport, and we could travel as a family back and forth from the Uk to Thailand without the need to apply for a visa for every visit (and without the cost/admin/hassel also involved). I wonder if anyone has applied for this, and what experiences they have had with it. We don't travel to the UK that much, and am not interested in the residency/settlement route. Many thanks in advance.

PS: Been too busy recently to spend time on the site. Keep up the good work!

[samran]

You may want to double check, but I think you are looking at visas for family members who are related to other EEA nationals (ie people who aren't british nationals).

You will need to look at getting a settlement visa for your family, I suspect, this will be based upon another category of visa especially for relatives of British nationals.

The only reason I know this is I have 2 seperate mates here in OZ who want to take their families to the UK. One is British, the other Irish, but they both had to take seperate visa routes.

One final thing, the visa you are talking about is for settlement purposes only, ie you must be moving there to live. With that comes many rights, such as access to employment, social services etc.

I think you may find it hard to get a settlement permit if you are only going for holidays, so you may have to end up getting some sort of multi entry visit permit instead.