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The route most people from the United Kingdom take, the mistake to avoid, and the facts that change because you are applying from the United Kingdom, each read from the official page it links.
New Zealand's working holiday visa for UK citizens is built for a long first stay: you choose its length, a shorter visa can later be extended through a Subsequent Work Visa, and no job offer is needed, though it allows temporary jobs only. Settling as a skilled worker starts from a job with an employer that Immigration New Zealand (INZ) has accredited. If the job is on the Green List, INZ's list of occupations in demand, a first-tier role can lead straight to a resident visa and a second-tier role to residence after a set period in it, while the Skilled Migrant Category, the residence visa for skilled workers, needs such a job too.
If you choose a longer visa, INZ asks for a medical examination and chest X-ray from a doctor on its approved panel, and for the longest stays, police certificates too. You must also normally live in the United Kingdom or a Crown Dependency (Jersey, Guernsey or the Isle of Man), shown by evidence such as letters to your home address, and a long spell abroad just before applying rules that out. Further ahead, INZ exempts many degrees from assessment by NZQA, New Zealand's qualifications authority, for the Skilled Migrant Category, but its list for the United Kingdom takes only honours bachelor's degrees and leaves out integrated master's degrees and the longer Master of Arts degrees that INZ expects from Oxford, Cambridge and several Scottish universities.
The mistake to avoid is sending the wrong UK record. A subject access request, the copy of your police records you can ask for under data protection law, is not a police certificate: INZ does not accept the blue certificate it produces, and UK government guidance sends visa applicants to the Police Certificate from ACRO, the UK police records office. If yours says 'No Live Trace', meaning old convictions were stepped down, still declare and explain them, because INZ counts them as part of your criminal history.
The Skilled Migrant Category sets no settlement-funds figure: it checks a skilled job offer and a points test instead.
A qualification from the United Kingdom is assessed for New Zealand by one of these organisations: New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA), International Qualification Assessment.
A Police Certificate from ACRO, the criminal records office of the UK's National Police Chiefs' Council; people living in Scotland and Northern Ireland apply there too. You apply online, and the certificate is sent by post.
New Zealand runs a working holiday scheme for citizens of the United Kingdom aged 18 to 35, for a stay of up to 36 months.
Tests New Zealand accepts with centres in the United Kingdom include IELTS General Training, IELTS Academic, PTE Academic, TOEFL iBT, OET and Cambridge English.
For New Zealand's skilled residence visas, a citizen of the United Kingdom who has spent at least 5 years working or studying in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom or the United States may not need a test at all.
In the 2023 census, 30% of people born in the United Kingdom who live in New Zealand lived in the Auckland region, more than in any other region.
Compared with other people born overseas, those born in the United Kingdom are most concentrated in the Otago region, among the regions where at least 5% of them live.
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