Declaring visits to the United Kingdom

Question

I am an Indian citizen with a valid short term standard visitor visa for the UK and have used it once to travel to the UK recently. Given this scenario, I am eligible to travel to Ireland under the short stay visa waiver program without the need of any extra Irish visa.

However, I plan to make a day trip from Ireland to Northern Ireland by a tour company. I have learnt online that there may or may not be checks once I cross the border into the UK and exit from the UK while returning to Ireland. I will be having a valid visa to the UK of course and eligible to enter Ireland using the same visa on the way back as well.

My question is, how do I declare this visit of mine to the UK if I have to apply for another UK visa in the future, because there may be no one recording my entry and exit into/out of the UK? Do I need to report to the police in Belfast (I will be going here) or send any details to the Home Office or UKVI? If I happen to file another UK visa in the future, can I just honestly mention that I traveled to the Northern Ireland for a day and submit the tour tickets as proof even if no one checked or recorded my visit?

Answer 1

It's not relevant if you have stamps or if there's records kept by the country you visited, you should declare the countries you visited. In the unlikely event that they ask for proof, you could provide your booking with the tour company.

They would probably not know if you left it out (but if they do, it may lead to a visa rejection and a travel ban), but history of visiting more countries and tourist-shaped behavior (like going on a tour, which is financially and culturally beneficial to UK, and is not an activity someone who's illegally working on a visa is likely to do) does appear positive.

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As a Germany resident, I don't need a visa to visit Schengen countries, and don't get my passport stamped when entering through most Schengen countries, including Germany.

In my most recent UK visa application I had to declare a short visit I made to a Schengen country even though only proof I had of it was train tickets, pictures I took there and payments I did there.

I also had to declare that I was in Germany for work alongside my most recent entry date (I noted down my initial date of move to Germany in the "Extra information" box), even though I had no stamps for it (Germany may keep entry/exit records of this one, but I doubt UK asked them for confirmation):

My visa was approved with no questions. As UK visa applications are centrally processed and not by various consulates around the world, I assume that the process would not be significantly different depending on country of application.