The rules appear to state that you can only apply within 3 months of the intended date of travel; but also that you should not book any tickets before the visa is approved.

 

So, I we applied for a tourist visa with a stated travel date of say June; but then did not travel until August; would this cause any problems?

 

Thanks

 

No, but if if the visa was granted they would print a start date of the travel of the indicative date in June on the visa vignette and it would be valid for six months from that date, so you would lose two months validity of the visa.

20 hours ago, FracturedRabbit said:

So, I we applied for a tourist visa with a stated travel date of say June; but then did not travel until August; would this cause any problems?

 

It depends on how long you intend to remain in the UK for.

 

The visa should start from the date of travel you enter on the application form, although I recommend repeating this in your covering letter as well, and be valid for 6 months.

 

So if you want to enter on, say, 1st August and stay the full 6 months (or to be accurate, 180 days) then you should put this as the date of travel in your application.

 

As you say, you can only put a start date up to three months in advance, so if you did want the visa to start on 1st August, then the earliest you could apply would be 1st May.

 

Of course, the visa can be used to enter the UK at any time during it's validity, so if it did start in June you could use it to enter the UK in August; but, as theoldgit says, you would effectively lose two months because you cannot stay in the UK  beyond the visa's expiry date, which would be 4 months after you entered.

 

Of course, past performance is no guarantee of future performance, but visit visas are usually processed reasonably quickly. The latest (November 2016) figures for Bangkok show that 99% of visit applications were processed within 10 working days. I have known it to be quicker than this, my sister in law's last application took just one day, but 10 days does seem the average. 

Thanks for the replies.