Hi, if anyone needs to get their Power of Attorney or other legal documents authorised by the Hague Apostile then this information may be of use to you.
The Foreign and Commonwealth office has moved its location to Milton Keynes from London.
The office in Milton Keynes is about a 10-15 minute drive from the M1 and there is ample pay and display parking nearby (30p per hour), one thing is to make sure you head for Norfolk House West, it can be a little confusing because the building is so large and we went to Norfolk House East to start with, but this was down to not reading the address properly and just heading for the first Norfolk house we saw.
The Legalisation Office is signposted and entry is via a receptionist who issues a ticket, a little bit like the Bacon counter at Asda, so you have a definite place in the queue. You then take the lift to the 3rd floor and into the office where there is a waiting area and you wait for your ticket number to be displayed above an available clerk. On the ticket is printed the expected wait time and luckily ours was zero minutes.
We went straight to the counter and paid £28.50 per document to be legalised, you can pay by cash or credit / debit card. We then had a 20 minute wait before the duly approved document was available for us to collect.
Notaries in the UK offer a postal or courier service to ensure a quick turn around of documents, but we thought it worth the while to make a 5 hour round trip (including the time to wait in the queue etc) for the peace of mind of knowing we had the document duly authorised and in our posession.
Kelju