How long does it take for the SIA badge to arrive?
“85% of all complex individual licence application decisions are made within 25 working days”.
Things that can affect the speed of your application
Your actions make the biggest difference to the speed of your application.
You can help to prevent delays by:
- providing the complete and correct information in your licence application form
- following all the instructions in our next steps messages and further information requests
Other things that can affect the speed of your application include:
- your address history(for example, if you have lived outside the UK, we may need an overseas criminal record check)
- your criminal record(if you have one), because we need to look at what’s on your record and decide if you are suitable to hold a licence
- whether you have charges that are awaiting a trial in court– because we will need to wait for the result of the court case before we can decide whether to give you a licence
- whether we need to check your right to workin the UK
- the number of applications we are currently processing
- the response time of organisations we work with (for example, the organisations we use to check your UK criminal record)
- whether your employer pays your licencefee in good time, if they are paying it for you
If your licence application is successful, They will send you a ‘licence granted’ letter in the post. You will also be able to see the letter in your SIA online account.