Permanent residents in Cayman applying for British Overseas Territories Citizenship are having to wait to submit their applications while the online portal is offline.
The portal, which, when operational, is usually accessed via the Office of the Deputy Governor’s website, has not worked since 1 Jan. “due to technical issues”, a government spokesperson confirmed.
The spokesperson said that while the site is temporarily offline, the office is not currently accepting applications via email or in person.
The BOTC portal has been down since the price of applications for naturalisation and registration as a British Overseas Territories Citizen increased at the start of the year.
For adults applying for naturalisation, the application fee more than doubled, from $625 to $1,300, and the filing fee rose from $200 to $500, bringing the total cost per application to $1,800. The price for those applying for registration as a British Overseas Territories Citizen, including adults and children, increased from $250 to $800, with the filing fee also rising to $500, for a total of $1,300 per application.
The application prices had not changed since the portal was launched in 2020.
The government spokesperson told the Compass the fee changes for naturalisation and registration as a BOTC are “unrelated to the temporary unavailability of the website”.
In a statement issued last month, the Office of the Deputy Governor said the increased fees reflected additional administrative costs and effort of processing applications, which included “comprehensive background checks conducted through the online system, verification of marriages where applicable, scheduling and hosting of pledge ceremonies for successful applicants, coordination with the United Kingdom Home Office and ongoing operation and maintenance of the BOTC online system”.
On Friday, in a statement released after the Compass reached out for comment about the website being offline, the Office of the Deputy Governor said it “recognises the importance of the portal” and assured the public that applications received before the site went offline were being processed.
Currently, the average processing time of applications is between six months and one year, according to the office.
The spokesperson said the eGov team was working to get the portal back online.
She added, “We are hopeful that the site will be fixed soon to avoid any unnecessary delays or inconvenience to the public.”
Editor’s note: This article has been amended to remove an erroneous paragraph regarding the timeline for permanent residency applications.
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It should not take more than a few minutes to make a couple of price changes. An hour at most.
Agree with Norman here. It is also pathetic that the process take months and then is followed by a potentially months long wait to hold a pledge ceremony unless someone wishes to pay for a private one.
The level of service delivered by the Civil Service wouldn’t be acceptable in 1980 and it definitely isn’t acceptable now with the amount of technology in place and the massive number of people working for Government.
Answering the phone and returning emails in a timely fashion shouldn’t be a stretch goal.