Supporting Signatories

Applicants must ensure that their supporting signatory meets the guidelines below.

• GPs cannot be used as a supporting signatory for Criterion 3 Health Condition or Disability. This is because applications under this criterion must be supported by a healthcare specialist who is already directly involved with managing the specialist treatment that the applicant is already receiving. 
• Supporting signatories cannot be a doctor in training of any grade (up to ST8). An application is likely to be rejected by the national review panel if a doctor in training has been used as the supporting signatory.
• The UKFPO and the national review panel will not contact supporting signatories to follow up on or verify the information they have (or have not) provided in an application (including signatures and dates). This is not a part of the application or review process.
• Typed signatures will be accepted. There is no need for a supporting signatory to provide a hand-written or electronic signature but these are acceptable too if they are preferred by the applicant or signatory.
• Supporting signatories should ideally have known the applicant for 1 month or more. In circumstances where this is not the case, the applicant must provide an explanation as to why their supporting signatory has not known them longer, and why an alternative signatory could not be used to support the application.
• Supporting signatories must be based in the UK. Applicants are required to be already living at an address in the UK to be eligible for pre-allocation and their circumstances must be current, therefore their signatory must also be based in the UK if they are supporting the application.
• Supporting signatories must provide a professional work based email address in part 2 of the application form, and not a personal email address (for example, a Gmail or Hotmail address). If the supporting signatory does not have a work based email address they should provide an explanation for this in the box provided in the form.