I am German citizen and my wife is Kazakh. We both live in the UK. She has a non-EEA family permit. The sticker in her passport says that this expired in January but this website https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-a-uk-residence-card says that she nevertheless has the right to stay in the UK.
In July we want together travel to France for 2 months and I don't know what we need to do.
This website https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-a-uk-residence-card/apply, in particular the phrase "The qualified person can include you if they apply online for permanent residence", suggested that I can apply online for both of us. After filling in everything and having payed 149.20 GBP I was directed to https://www.ukvcas.co.uk where I was asked to pay another fee of 400 GBP for an appointment. In addition, all options close to my place in the North-East where fully booked and only in London appointments were available.
Do I really have to travel for one day to London and pay this fee? The initial website https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-a-uk-residence-card/apply (on the botton) says explicitly that the fee is 65 GBP per person - and not 465 GBP.
I am really confused and I would be extremely happy for some advice.
Thank you, Sven
Update: I now figured, that the 400 GBP were for a premium service (thank you, Traveller!). However, the situation is still that I can only book three appointments (for 120 GBP) at Newcastle. As you see in the screenshots the option "View free of charge apointments only" is only available for Manchester - where no appointments are available anyway.
Michael's question, what I payed the 146.20 GBP for, I cannot answer for sure. I was on the website for getting a "residence card" but I fear that the link to the online application brought me to a the application for "permanent residence". I am however not sure if this is something different or not. In case, someone can derive what I applied for from the payment confirmation, here is the screenshot of that: