All three Spanish Consulates in the UK have outsourced handling of Non-Lucrative Visa applications to BLS International.

The consulates in London and Edinburgh were the first to make the switch at the start of summer in 2023 at the onset of Student Visa application processing.

Manchester consulate continued handling Non-Lucrative Visa applications in house, though to the end of October 2023, before making the switch.

Everything is now handled by BLS so all former procedures through the Consulates have been done away with, and new processes with BLS are in place.

Who Are BLS International?

BLS International Ltd is an international provider of visa processing services.

According to its corporate website BLS International Services Ltd has 18+ years of experience and is a globally trusted and highly esteemed tech-enabled service partner for governments and citizens. The company has established itself as one of the top 2 players in the field of visa, passport, consular, and citizen services.

BLS further boasts to collaborating with over 46 governments, including Diplomatic Missions, Embassies, and Consulates and to have operations across 64 nations, with a global footprint spanning more than 50,000 centres worldwide supported by 60,000 employees and associates.  According to the website write up, BLS International has processed over 220 million applications.

A review of their financial results for the quarter ending June 30th, shows income of just under £38m for the period, of which around £30m was attributable to visa services.  It made a pre-tax profit of just under £8m for the quarter.

The company is listed on the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) and it has 26 subsidiaries, including the in the UK, BLS International Services (UK) Ltd.  As of the time of writing BLS has a market capitalisation of just under £100m.

Non-Lucrative Visa Appointments at BLS International UK

Until the recent switch of long term visa application processing by the Spanish Consulates to BLS, the company only handled short term (Schengen) visas for Spain.

If you were to go by their Google or Trustpilot reviews, you might question why the Spanish Consulates chose BLS.  However we have to say that the feedback about experience from all of our clients who have attended Non-Lucrative Visa appointments at BLS has pretty much all been positive.  Perhaps arguably, processing times have even improved as we have definitely some very fast visa application turnarounds.   Clients report back that staff were friendly and helpful.  The BLS offices also have printing, photocopying and passport photo facilities, in case you forgot something.

Getting a Non-Lucrative Visa Appointment at BLS International UK

This is a sticking point as the BLS system is far from perfect.  Appointments should be booked through the BLS website link to access the booking page.  The website and registration system was built for handling short term visas and has not yet been revised for long term visa application, so it’s a little confusing.  It also not a great system and you will likely find yourself going round in circles few times.

If the page isn’t working for you, the only advice we can give is to keep persevering.  Calling the BLS offices is no use as they will not book an appointment over the phone.

All the BLS offices can be contacted by email, so if you do experience problems accessing the booking page and can’t get through on the phone, you can email the centre you need to attend to let them know you’re having problems.

There were significant problems with the system when BLS first took over, however after speaking to the management at BLS International UK voicing the concerns of our clients and the difficulties being experienced getting appointments, these issue were resolved.  Hopefully they will continue to work on and improve their system.

Non-Lucrative Visa Appointments – Mobile Service

In the UK BLS International offer a mobile service to collect your application and process your bio-metrics in your home.  They charge for the service, and the fee depends on where you live.  It has been observed by some that it’s convenient that the BLS home visit booking page is readily available, while the standard booking page isn’t.  We can’t comment on that other than to say it’s definitely an awkward coincidence.