ACRO Certificate Refund Policy: Common Questions

Answers about the ACRO Police Certificate: refund policy, No Trace results, FCDO apostille and applying from outside the UK.

Anyone assembling a visa file eventually hits the same line in the checklist: police certificate. Then the questions start, and they are rarely about the document itself: what happens if I apply for the wrong thing, and will ACRO give the fee back? This page collects the questions applicants ask most often about the ACRO Police Certificate and answers them directly, with the refund policy getting the largest share of attention, since that is where official guidance is thinnest and guesswork is most expensive.

What an ACRO Police Certificate shows, and who asks for it

An ACRO Police Certificate is the official police certificate issued for visa and immigration purposes by the ACRO Criminal Records Office. It is a single document based on a search of UK police records, and it shows one of three things: details of a record held against you, a No Trace statement, or a No Live Trace statement.

Visa authorities ask for it because they want assurance about the time you spent in the United Kingdom, regardless of your citizenship. A UK police certificate of this type is required for visas to Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Cayman Islands, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States. ACRO — the Association of Chief Police Officers Criminal Record Office — is the issuing body for police certificates used in visa and immigration applications.

ACRO’s remit goes beyond this one document. The same office also issues the International Child Protection Certificate (ICPC), a separate check used when someone from the UK will be working with children abroad. If your paperwork mentions an ICPC, it is still ACRO behind it, but it is not the same document as a police certificate and the two are not interchangeable.

Which of the three outcomes appears on your certificate is not something you choose; it follows from what the search returns. If nothing is held, the certificate states No Trace. If something was found but is no longer active, you will likely see No Live Trace. If a record is live, its details are listed on the document.

One point of confusion worth clearing up early: ACRO certificates and DBS certificates are often mixed up, and mixing them up is the most expensive mistake in this process. A DBS check is an employment screening document for use inside the UK. An ACRO Police Certificate is the document visa authorities abroad ask for. Applying for the wrong one means paying twice and starting over.

ACRO vs Subject Access Request vs DBS: which document does your situation need

The short answer: for a visa, you need the ACRO Police Certificate. The other two documents exist for different purposes, and immigration authorities generally will not accept them in place of a police certificate.

The Subject Access Request (SAR) deserves a note of its own. Some applicants use it as a “preview” of their record before paying for the certificate, and that is a legitimate tactic: it can reveal surprises while there is still time to deal with them. But a SAR response is not a substitute for the certificate itself. If a visa checklist says “police certificate”, the issuing body it means is ACRO.

If you lived in more than one country

An ACRO Police Certificate covers UK records only. If your visa file needs certificates from several countries, each country runs its own system with its own rules, and they do not necessarily mirror the UK’s.

Austria is a useful example. Data from the criminal registers of other EU countries is added by the criminal records office at the Vienna state police department. In other words, some national registers pull in cross-border EU data automatically, while the UK certificate does not work that way: it reflects what UK police records hold.

Validity rules differ too. An Italian certificato dei carichi pendenti, for instance, is valid for a maximum of six months from the date of issue, per the guidance of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The lesson generalises: before you sequence any certificate into your visa paperwork, check that country’s own validity window rather than assuming a universal rule.

Applying from outside the United Kingdom

You do not need to be in the UK to apply. The entire application runs online, from any country, and the finished certificate can be posted to an overseas address.

The application itself asks for identity details, addresses where you have lived in the UK, and a passport-style photograph. The address history is where most delays originate: gaps, old postcodes and mismatched dates trigger manual review. Before starting, dig out the exact dates and addresses for every period you lived in the United Kingdom, however short the stay was.

Payment is made online as part of the application, which brings us to the question this page exists to answer.

No Trace and No Live Trace: what the statuses mean

When the certificate arrives, one of three outcomes appears on it, and two of them confuse people.

No Trace means the search found nothing against you. For visa purposes this is the clean result, and no further action is needed.

No Live Trace means something was found, but it is no longer active: a spent conviction, a closed case, an old caution that no longer forms part of a live record. The certificate still discloses that something existed. Whether this matters for your visa depends entirely on the destination country’s rules, not on ACRO’s.

Two situations call for action:

• You believe the status is wrong. If you are certain nothing should appear at all and the certificate shows No Live Trace, or the details listed are inaccurate, write to customer.services@acro.pnn.police.uk with your application reference and an explanation of what you believe is incorrect. ACRO runs a review procedure for disputed content, and correcting a certificate before it reaches the visa authority is far easier than explaining an error afterwards.

• You want to know what the record actually was. A Subject Access Request to the relevant police force can show the underlying data in more detail than the certificate discloses. This is the SAR’s proper role in this process: investigation, not submission.

Do not delay the dispute. If you wait until after the apostille, or worse, after lodging the visa application, you may need to repeat the whole cycle with a corrected certificate.

Apostille and legalisation: the FCDO step

Many destinations want the certificate not just issued but legalised, meaning certified with an apostille so it is recognised abroad. In the UK, that apostille is issued by the FCDO: the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, whose Legalisation Office handles apostilles on UK public documents.

One detail catches applicants out every year: the e-apostille is not available for ACRO police certificates. According to the guidance on gov.uk, ACRO police certificates are on the list of documents excluded from the electronic apostille route, alongside birth, marriage and death certificates and DBS certificates. The practical consequence: you need the physical certificate, and the apostille is attached to the paper document through the FCDO’s standard legalisation process.

This also means the apostille is a separate stage: certificate processing and FCDO legalisation are distinct steps, and both need to be completed before your visa appointment.

Refund policy: the questions nobody answers clearly

Now to the core question. You paid for the certificate and something went wrong: you picked the wrong service, your visa was postponed, you applied twice, or the certificate arrived too late to be useful.

The honest answer is that refunds are not automatic, and ACRO’s published terms are the final word. No third-party guide, including this one, can override those terms. What follows is how the practical picture looks based on how the process is structured.

When a refund is realistically possible:

• You spotted the error before ACRO began processing the application. A service applied for in mistake, a duplicate application, a payment made twice: if you catch it early and write immediately, the fee has a real chance of being returned, because the work has not been done yet.

• The application could not be processed at all for a reason attributable to the system rather than to your form, for example a payment fault. These cases are handled individually through customer support.

When ACRO typically refuses:

• Processing has already started. Once the search work has been carried out, the fee is generally treated as payment for work done, regardless of the outcome.

• The reason is a change of plans on your side: the visa was rescheduled, you decided against applying, you no longer need the certificate. An unused certificate is still a processed application.

• The certificate arrived too late for your plans: choosing a service tier is the applicant’s responsibility.

What to actually do if you want to request a refund: email customer.services@acro.pnn.police.uk with your application reference number, the date of payment, and a short factual explanation of why you believe the fee should be returned. Write before processing begins if you possibly can, because that is the strongest position you will ever be in. Keep the tone factual.

One more thing worth knowing: a refund request and a complaint about the certificate’s content are two different channels. Do not bundle them into one email, or you risk both being parked while someone works out which team should handle them.

A worked scenario: certificate and apostille

Situation: you live outside the UK, and the destination requires a police certificate with an apostille.

Steps:

• Confirm on the destination country’s official visa pages that they require the ACRO Police Certificate specifically, and check whether they state a validity window for it; the exact rule belongs to the visa authority, not to ACRO. Validity rules differ between countries — Italy’s certificato dei carichi pendenti, for example, is valid at most six months from issue per the Italian foreign ministry’s guidance — which is a reminder to verify the window for every document in your file.

• Apply online, choosing the service tier that suits your situation.

• Once the paper certificate arrives, submit it to the FCDO Legalisation Office for the apostille. Remember that the e-apostille route does not apply to ACRO certificates, so the paper process is the only one available.

• If the certificate shows No Live Trace and you believe that is wrong, contact customer.services@acro.pnn.police.uk before the apostille, not after.

Checklist before you pay

Work through this list in order, and most of the expensive mistakes on this page simply cannot happen:

• Confirm the destination country requires the ACRO Police Certificate, not a DBS check or a SAR response.

• Check the current fee for both service tiers before you pay.

• Assemble your full UK address history with exact dates before starting the form.

• If you need certificates from other countries where you have lived, check each one’s validity window separately; rules such as the six-month limit on Italy’s carichi pendenti certificate do not transfer between documents.

• Plan for the FCDO apostille as a separate step, and remember it must be the paper route.

• Save your application reference and payment confirmation the moment the application is submitted.

• If anything on the finished certificate looks wrong, email customer.services@acro.pnn.police.uk.

The refund policy is the part of this process where official guidance is thinnest, and the practical summary fits in one line: ACRO’s published terms decide, your strongest position exists before processing starts, and customer.services@acro.pnn.police.uk is the only channel that matters. Everything else on this page is about making sure you never need that email in the first place.

This page is for general information only and is not legal advice. Apostilles for UK public documents are issued exclusively by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) Legalisation Office; this site is not affiliated with any government body. Please consult a qualified professional before making decisions.

FAQ

It shows the result of a search of UK police records: either details of a record held against you, or a No Trace or No Live Trace statement when nothing active is found.

An ACRO Police Certificate is issued for visas and immigration abroad, while a DBS certificate is designed for employment screening inside the UK and is not accepted by visa authorities in its place.

Yes. The application runs online from any country, and the finished certificate can be posted to an overseas address.

Many destinations ask for an FCDO apostille on top of the certificate. Note that e-apostille is not available for ACRO police certificates, so the paper route through the FCDO Legalisation Office applies.

Refunds are not automatic. The safest step is to email customer.services@acro.pnn.police.uk with your application reference before assuming the money can be returned, ideally before processing of the application has begun.

Typically once processing has started, or when the reason is simply a change of plans on the applicant’s side. The terms published by ACRO are the final word in any dispute.

Helpful guides

Which UK documents can be apostilled: certificates, degrees, company and court papers, e-Apostille rules, FCDO rejections and embassy attestation explained.

Which countries accept a UK apostille, which require embassy attestation, and country-by-country guides for UK documents used abroad.

Apostille meaning explained for UK documents: what the FCDO certificate looks like, which documents qualify, e-Apostille and when embassy legalisation.

Official sources

Rules are checked against official sources.

We handle your documents in a few steps

Tell us your situation

Which country, which purpose (visa, work, study, residence)

We identify the right document and authority

Which document, which government body issues/apostilles it

You know exactly where to go

A clear checklist instead of guesswork across dozens of pages