Events

BOVF representatives attend the annual conferences of the major UK parties.

We do this for one reason: conferences are where policy people, advisers and backbenchers are available in a way they are not for the rest of the year, and where an unfamiliar issue can be raised in a five-minute conversation that would otherwise take three months of correspondence.

We attend all of them. BOVF is non-partisan, does not endorse parties or candidates, and takes no party funding. Our issues — pension uprating, ballot return, fee status, family visas, bank accounts — are administrative questions about the machinery of citizenship, and we have made the same case in the same terms to every party that would hear it.

The conversations that begin at conference are what produce the meetings listed on our achievements timeline.

BOVF's first European meeting took place in Milan in September 2025, and led directly to the launch of our Italy branch under Clarissa Killwick.

The agenda differed from our Asian meetings. Where Bangkok and Singapore lead with frozen pensions and banking, Milan led with post-Brexit status and with representation — specifically, the contrast with Italy's own arrangements, under which citizens abroad elect 12 deputies and 6 senators.

That comparison is difficult to unhear once made. A British citizen in Milan is represented by the MP for a constituency they may have left decades ago. An Italian citizen in London has representatives elected specifically to speak for Italians abroad.

BOVF held an event in Taipei with BritCham Taiwan, our first collaboration with a chamber of commerce and a model we have looked to repeat elsewhere.

Chambers reach a part of the British population abroad that community groups often miss: working professionals, many with children approaching university age and UK financial affairs to maintain. The issues that landed were accordingly university fee status and UK bank account closures, alongside registration.

Kevin Liu coordinates BOVF in Taiwan.

BOVF volunteers gave talks in Phnom Penh and Pattaya, both to audiences composed largely of retired British residents.

Neither Cambodia nor Thailand has a reciprocal agreement with the UK, so attendees at both talks were receiving a state pension frozen at the rate first paid. Several had been abroad long enough to have lost their vote under the 15-year rule and had not registered since its abolition in January 2024 — including, as it turned out, one man whose case became Anthony's story.

Volunteers stayed afterwards to help people register on the spot, which remains the single most effective thing we do at any event.

Our Singapore branch presented to a group of international school heads on a problem their families meet repeatedly and often too late: university fee status for British children educated abroad.

School leaders are frequently the first people a family asks about UK university applications, and fee status is rarely covered in the guidance they have. A British child assessed as an international student faces fees several times the home rate and is excluded from student finance — a difference that can decide whether a UK education happens at all.

The session covered how assessments are made, why two universities can reach different conclusions on similar facts, and what families should be documenting years before an application.

Nick Lord coordinates BOVF in Singapore. Our Higher Education policy group is led by Simon Landy.

Our Japan coordinators, Edward Vickers and Colin Mason, ran a briefing for British residents covering registration, the practicalities of voting from Japan, and the spouse and family visa rules.

The visa section drew the most questions. Japan has a substantial population of long-settled British citizens with Japanese spouses and children, for whom the minimum income requirement presents exactly the problem described in Edward's case study: an established overseas income that counts for very little because it was not earned in the UK.

On voting, the honest message about postal ballots was the part people found most useful — that only 52% of overseas postal votes were returned in time to be counted in 2024, and that the timetable, not the voter, is usually the reason.

BOVF volunteers ran a stand at the British Club Bangkok community fair.

Thailand has no reciprocal agreement with the UK on pension uprating, so a British pensioner retiring here receives the rate first paid and no annual increase thereafter. Frozen pensions accordingly dominate every conversation we have in the country, and this event was no exception.

The connection we make at every stand is the one many people have not made for themselves: the roughly 450,000 pensioners affected by the freeze are, since January 2024, electors for life. An unregistered pensioner is invisible to the political system. A registered one is a constituent.

Eric Jordan and Ceri Weaver coordinate BOVF in Thailand.

BOVF took a stand at the Living in Bangkok expo, one of the largest gatherings of the British and wider expatriate community in Thailand.

The format was deliberately simple. Rather than explaining the organisation, we asked visitors one question: are you registered to vote? For most people the answer was no, and for a large proportion the follow-up was some version of "am I even allowed to?"

That misconception — that the 15-year rule still applies — remains the single biggest obstacle we encounter. It was abolished on 16 January 2024, and a great many people have not heard.

Volunteers walked visitors through registration on tablets at the stand. It is the model our Registration Concierge is built on.