Non negotiable...

Today, we finally found out why my husband's initial application for a COS had been unsuccessful and, true to form, the reasoning behind the rejection was borderline farcical!

In order to apply for a COS, a sponsoring company must show that they have completed a resident market labour test. This basically consists of publishing the job advertisement on several specific websites for a certain amount of time (28 days) and then submitting copies of the published advertisements as well as information on the recruitment process (candidate CVs, interview transcripts, etc) to the UKBA....just to show that the foreign candidate (in this case my husband) is the only person qualified for the job.

This was all completed by my husband's company in November. The UKBA then rejected the application in December, claiming that because the company had listed the salary as "negotiable" and not "competitive" in the advertisement published on the Job Centre Plus website (the UK government's official job-hunting website and a compulsory element of the resident market labour test), less British nationals would have applied for the job!

When the company's Head of Recruitment replied that the company had always listed their salaries on Job Centre Plus as "negotiable" as the website didn't, in fact, have a "competitive" category option (wtf?), and that this had never impacted their COS applications previously, the UKBA replied that they had recently updated the Job Centre Plus website to include this category and could the company please now repeat the test!

Again, absolutely no notice whatsoever was given as to the updates to the Job Centre Plus website and the impact that this would have on companies advertising there as part of the resident market labour test.

This has now set my husband's visa application back yet another two months! The new market labour test will be complete by mid-February and the earliest the COS application can be resubmitted is March the 5th.

It is scary how much these small details can push back an application. You really get an insight into just how easy it can be to lose a year or two of your life to the UKBA...