Passport legalisation

thelawnet

I've been trying to organise my daughter's Indonesian passport in London. I am not in the UK at the moment, but my wife is. I got my passport legalised previously, by the Legalisation office (required for the passport process), I visited several solicitors who didn't want to know citing 'Know Your Customer' and such like and eventually found one who did it, for which they charged £5, and then I sent this to the Legalisation Office and paid £30.

Anyway, apparently the Indonesian Embassy want my daughter's British passport to be legalised as well... So my wife went back to the same solicitor, and they said 'sorry we no longer do that'.

So I'm thinking I can send it here: https://www.apostille.org.uk/apostille-passports

They charge £66 (including the £30 FCO fee), so about another £30 on top of finding another solicitor, but my wife is a bit useless.

I think my daughter doesn't need to be there for the certification (?); she is in France next week.

It says on the FCO/Legalisation website:

"Your passport must be certified by a solicitor or notary public in the UK.

When the solicitor or notary public signs the document, they must:

have a valid practising certificate
sign the document in the UK
state the action they have taken eg witnessed, certified a copy, confirmed as original
use their personal signature, not a company signature
include the date of certification
include their name and company address
The solicitor or notary public’s signature must be an original, hand-written signature. We can't accept a photocopy or scan of a signature."

Any thoughts? Cheaper way to do it online ?

dj1471

Any notary public can certify a copy of the passport and many will send it on to the Foreign Office to be legalised for you too (you can do this step yourself if you want to):

https://www.thenotariessociety.org.uk/notary-search

I suspect it will be cheaper to find a local notary for this 5-minute job than to use an online service where you have to pay postage.

You may be having issues simply because it's barely worth their time to certify a single document. The last time I did this the solicitor had a minimum fee of £60 (I was getting a bunch done, so that was fine). All I can suggest is to email a bunch of local notaries from the above link and see who will do it cheapest.

agrinnall

I had it done earlier this year, cost me £25 for the passport to be notarised and to have another form witnessed. I used the solicitors who had drawn up my will but in both cases it was because they are about the closest to where I live.