ey_tony
Established Member
My firearm and shotgun certificates are due for their 5 year renewal at the end of next month and according the local police website processing can take up to two weeks so today I thought I'd better get my skates on and pop down to my local doctor's surgery and hand in the forms which can be downloaded from the local police force's web site and ask for one of the doctors at my practice to sign the forms indicating that I have no health issues, either mental or physical which would exclude me for continuing firearm possession. I know I have absolutely no issues which would preclude me from gun ownership so pretty straight forward really.
It used to be that I simply filled in a form which included the names of two referees and the name of my doctor and the practice at which he worked and I presume they made a call to the practice but whatever happened, I paid a fixed fee (£65.00 I believe) for the joint (coterminous) renewal of both my shotgun and firearm certificates and nothing more was heard until a local police officer delivered the new certificate and checked the gun serial numbers I own and where I stored them.
The process has now gone online which they claim is to save money so it requires the applicant to download the relevant forms and have them signed by one's doctor which should take in essence a few minutes at most but for this simple service I was told by the receptionist that I had to pay £110.00 up front. I expected to pay a fair fee for the simple service but £110.00, c'mon it's a rip off.
I was also informed by the receptionist that as the doctors were so busy with private work it could take up to 30 days before I would receive the completed forms. That could mean me being late with my application which in turn would require me to store the guns at the firearm club of which I've been a member for 35 years. Not a real hardship but just another issue that need not arise. I realise that with living in a rural area there are bound to be higher numbers of firearm/shotgun applications than other areas so maybe that's why it's so difficult to get a doctor's appointment these days...they're too busy making money filling out forms.
I don't use my guns for any form of killing and it's only paper targets at which I shoot so to be honest I think it's like everything else in the UK just another rip off where they milk every penny from you that they can.
It used to be that I simply filled in a form which included the names of two referees and the name of my doctor and the practice at which he worked and I presume they made a call to the practice but whatever happened, I paid a fixed fee (£65.00 I believe) for the joint (coterminous) renewal of both my shotgun and firearm certificates and nothing more was heard until a local police officer delivered the new certificate and checked the gun serial numbers I own and where I stored them.
The process has now gone online which they claim is to save money so it requires the applicant to download the relevant forms and have them signed by one's doctor which should take in essence a few minutes at most but for this simple service I was told by the receptionist that I had to pay £110.00 up front. I expected to pay a fair fee for the simple service but £110.00, c'mon it's a rip off.
I was also informed by the receptionist that as the doctors were so busy with private work it could take up to 30 days before I would receive the completed forms. That could mean me being late with my application which in turn would require me to store the guns at the firearm club of which I've been a member for 35 years. Not a real hardship but just another issue that need not arise. I realise that with living in a rural area there are bound to be higher numbers of firearm/shotgun applications than other areas so maybe that's why it's so difficult to get a doctor's appointment these days...they're too busy making money filling out forms.
I don't use my guns for any form of killing and it's only paper targets at which I shoot so to be honest I think it's like everything else in the UK just another rip off where they milk every penny from you that they can.
