Kochi: A British visa application centre will open in Kochi next week to help applicants from Kerala.

The centre, to function from 8 am to 2 pm everyday from Monday to Friday, will collect applications, send them to the British Deputy High Commission (BDHC) in Chennai for clearance and will distribute the visas.

Geoff Wood, second secretary, immigration, at the BDHC office, says the visas could be issued within a minimum of three days where no personal interviews are required.

Where interviews are required, the applicants can now choose the date and time of the interview in Chennai to suit their convenience. This way, the serpentine lines at BDHC can now be a thing of the past, he hopes.

He says the Kochi centre will only be a forwarding and distributing office and that the visa decisions will be taken by the immigration clearance officers at BDHC.

BDHC, he says, has streamlined the visa application procedure so that it is now user-friendly and requires a short time. With the opening of the Kochi centre, all the southern states now have a visa centre each.

Wood says the Kochi centre is the outcome of a rise in the number of British visa-seekers from Kerala in the past few years. He notes that 15 to 20 per cent of all the visa-seekers from South India are from Kerala. Nearly 15 Keralites seek British visa every day.