I recently had to obtain legalised documents for my visa in Qatar. This isn’t a particually difficult task but is expensive and time consuming. The UK Foreign and Commonwealth office provide this service either by post or over the counter. The only problem is the counter in question is in Milton Keynes about 90 minutes drive from London. They used to have it in London but moved it out of town last year. You can find information on their website. When I turned up at 09:20 there were about 15 people waiting for the doors to open at 09:30.  Once we got inside and up to the third floor things were reasonably quick. I waited about 25 minutes for my turn, handed over my documents and money (GBP 27.00 each) then went and sat down for 20 minutes whist they processed them. I was out of the building by about 10:30.

In my case I had two things to legalise, a degree certificate and a doctors letter.  They won’t legalise degree certificates directly and you have to go to a notary or solicitor first and get them to certify that the certificate is an original or true copy. That cost me GBP 69.00 and took about an hour a few days before I went to Milton Keynes. The doctors letter was more straightforward. In both cases legalisation consisted of them sticking a bit of paper to the back of each document (an apostille) and embossing the whole thing with a seal.

It all seems strange that they can legalise doctors letters directly but require a notary to certify University degree certificates. After all both are semi-independent organisations and if they can do one you would naturally assume that they can do the other.  Its all well beyond me, logic isn’t a feature of government or legal systems. You can find a list of what can be legalised on their website.

One document which I have yet to sort out for Qatar is a “Police Clearance Certificate”, unfortunately the UK doesn’t issue them apart for visa purposes in relation to a handful of countries and Qatar isn’t one of them. So I’ve ended up requesting a printout from the Police National Computer under the data protection rules, they have to send me this within 40 days after I formally asked them for it and I can safely bet they will take the maximum possible time to do it.

The Metropolitan Police website has a “Frequently Asked Questions”  (FAQ) section which explains the situation with regard to Police Clearance Certificates which you can find here. I’ve reproduced the text below.