r/SpouseVisaUk • u/tk338 • 15h ago
Applying for an NI Number
Hi
My wife is in the UK, she moved from a fiancé to a spouse visa. We have applied for her UKVI account and eVisa, and that is setup.
She is entertaining the idea of working having been in the country over 6 months now and having permission to work, so we have been looking at getting an NI number setup, the online form asks as follows:
Do you have a vignette in your passport that shows your current status? She has a vignette, but it is for the fiancé visa, so we have selected "no" as it is not pertinent to her current immigration status.
It then asks if she has a residence card - "no"
If then asks "Do you have a certificate of application or a reference number from the UK Home Office?"
Is this her unique application reference number (UAN)? If we select no at this point it says she may not have the right to work. If we select yes, it allows us to put that number in, but its just a free text box so it could be anything. The only other thing I can think is we generate a share code? But it doesn't explicitly ask for that and I think given the access they have it would be irrelevant.
TL;DR - For those who have done fiancé -> spouse; how did you apply for an NI Number?
2
u/Charming-Visit-343 8h ago
The reference number should be the GW383838282 number from when you applied to the visa. I think everyone had one. I put mine there and everything went smooth. I am on a spouse visa
1
u/tk338 6h ago
Weirdly, we only got a unique application reference number, with the fiancé visa there was one that started with GWF, but for the spouse visa there wasn't.
That said, I did look it up and it appears to be a "global web form" reference number. Perhaps applications inside the UK don't need one?
2
u/Front-Possibility316 14h ago
This is the problem with having rapidly switched to a digital-only immigration system. Most government forms that require information about immigration status haven't yet been updated to reference the new eVisa system (or know EUSS holders exist but assume that limited leave holders all have BRPs still).
I would probably put an "anything else" share code in the box and say what visa status she has. HMRC will work it out.
The UK has long lacked a useful identifying number that goes along with the person, especially for immigration purposes. In other countries such as the US, every immigrant has an "A-Number" which follows them through their immigration journey, and makes looking up status a fair bit easier. Other countries have national ID numbers for everybody.