International Visits Control Office

What does IVCO do?

• To assist UK Defence Contractors in obtaining visit clearance
• To establish and maintain records of the staff cleared for overseas visits
• To act as a focal point to ascertain the permitted levels of access to UK Protectively Marked material allowed by foreign nationals
• To simplify the procedures for issuing Security Assurances and for transmitting them to the appropriate authorities

• Inward - Visits to the UK ...Visits by all foreign nationals to UK Defence Contractor Sites, MOD (HQ) Buildings and MOD Agencies
• Outward - Visits from the UK ...Visits by security cleared UK nationals to overseas government, contractor and military sites

• You should only contact IVCO desk officers to hasten existing visit requests if it is absolutely vital to do so. The priority is being given to processing requests rather than dealing with telephone calls. Each telephone call will hold-up visit processing.
• Applications for inward and outward visits will be dealt with in strict rotation. Please ensure that your Request for Visit (RfV) Application forms are submitted fully and correctly completed and don’t submit visit requests which fall out with the agreed timescales.
• Avoid emergency Visit Requests unless they really are cases of genuine emergency.
• Please only contact the IVCO office in emergencies all other queries can be sent by e-mail or fax as listed in the Contact us box (See right hand side)
• Our opening hours are: Mon-Thur 11:00 to 16:00 and Fri 10:00 to 15:00 Closed everyday between 12:00 and 13:00

Your co-operation is greatly appreciated and will help us all.

It has become apparent that request for visits are being submitted to IVCO incorrectly, this has lead to visits taking longer to process.

As we have a very strict lead time for all visits it will become necessary to reject incorrect visits submissions.

Please see below some short guidelines

1. Please ensure that an up to date index card is attached to the visit request, when the visitors are new to your organisation or if there are new details of their clearance or passport.
   
2. If the visit is an emergency, please attach a justification letter, the letter must be from the host site.
   
3. For all Amendment visits please state the IVCO reference in section 1 of the form and also state which amendment it is (For example amendment 1, amendment 2 etc)
   
4. Please only complete section 1-10 of the request for visit form, section 11 and 12 must remain empty.
   
5. On the site to be visited section of the form (Section 3), you must state a full name, fax and email details
   
6. Failure to complete 1-5 will result in rejection of this visit by IVCO.
   
7. Please make sure that the visitor has the relevant clearance to match the required level of classification (Section 7 of the form) and that their clearance expiry date matches the entire visit dates (section 4 of the form), if these do not match then the visitor will be removed from the request for visit form.

Lead Times

The Lead time for visits is 20 working days notice for standard visits

IVCO Emergency Lead times

Please be aware that the current lead time for Emergency visits (Inwards) is 5 working days, this does not include the day the visit is received in IVCO or the start date of the visit

All visits and queries can be sent by email or fax (Please see " Contact us " top right hand side of this page).

Please be aware that our opening hours

Mon –Thur 11.00-12.00 and 13.00-16.00
Fri 10.00-12.00 and 13:00-15.00