Apostille vs. Embassy legalisation for Chile
An apostille and embassy legalisation solve the same underlying problem — proving a UK signature is real to a country that has never seen it — but they take very different paths to get there and cost very different amounts of effort. Embassy legalisation adds a foreign consulate's own stamp on top of the UK one; an apostille is a single certificate designed to be the last word on the matter, and for Chile it already is.
Document legalisation for Chile, in the strict two-stage sense, simply is not the route this destination needs, however familiar that longer process is from other countries. A consulate visit, a second posting, a second queue — none of that applies once the FCDO has added its stamp, which keeps the whole process to one office and one wait rather than two of each, start to finish.
Chile's Hague status & what it means
Chile joined the Hague Apostille Convention in 2016, decades after the United Kingdom's own accession in 1965, and that gap in dates does not matter in the slightest — both countries are now inside the same agreement, and the treaty does not treat older members any differently from newer ones that joined much later.
What that membership buys the sender is trust already agreed in advance, before any specific paper is ever sent. An apostille from United Kingdom to Chile is checked by the receiving office against a register the FCDO keeps, not against a fresh judgement made on the day the paper arrives, which is exactly what a Hague-member pairing is designed to remove from the process for both sides.
The Nottingham → Chile route step by step
Everything starts with the paper being right. Court and company records usually carry their own signature already; a civil record should be a certified copy freshly ordered from Nottingham Register Office, so the one original a family holds is never the thing sitting in a postbox on its way to Milton Keynes.
After that, the route is entirely postal, with no counter anywhere in the chain. Apostille issued in Nottingham for use in Chile means, in practice, one parcel to Milton Keynes and one parcel back — the FCDO checks it, stamps it, and returns it, with no Chilean office involved before the paper leaves the UK for good.
Cost & timing for this route
The FCDO charges £45 per document on the standard postal service, or £40 per document through the next-day route open to registered businesses only. Everyone else should plan around up to 25 working days, plus the time the post takes in each direction, and start earlier rather than later whenever a deadline is fixed on the Chilean side of things.
What you need for an apostille for Chile does not differ from any other Hague destination on the cost side — the fee and the queue belong to the FCDO, set once for every country in the treaty, Chile included, and unaffected by which country the paper is heading to next once it leaves Milton Keynes.
Destination-specific requirements
An apostille for Chile is the correct and sufficient certification on its own; Chilean offices are built to accept the FCDO stamp on sight, without asking for anything further to be attached to it while the document is still in the UK or somewhere in transit to Chile.
A Spanish translation of the underlying English paper may still be wanted once it lands with a specific Chilean office, but that is a decision made locally, after arrival, and separate from the apostille stage — it does not change what happens in Nottingham or Milton Keynes beforehand, and it does not slow the apostille itself down or add a UK fee on top.