Why the route ends abroad
Ghana has not joined the Hague Apostille Convention, so a British mark on its own does not answer for a paper used there. Papers going that way need embassy or consular legalisation instead: certification by the FCDO Legalisation Office, then a consular stamp added after it. The last of those is the one the destination reads, and it is the reason the run does not end here.
Where Ghana stands
An apostille is not accepted for Ghana, and no version of the file alters that. The status is not a preference or a rule of thumb — it decides which desks are involved and the order they come in. Once it is settled, most of the questions people bring to this corridor answer themselves, because the shape of the job stops being a guess.
Who each stage is talking to
A certified copy speaks to the office that certifies it: here is a record, drawn from a register, carrying the marks a register puts on it. The British certification then speaks to the consular desk. The consular stamp speaks to whoever asked you for the paper in the end. Four parties, and each one listens only to the one immediately before it.
That is why an improvised order never works here. You cannot take the last stamp early and fill the earlier one in afterwards, because the desk giving that last stamp is looking at what is already on the sheet. It is also why a half-finished file looks so convincing: complete for the reader it was written for, useless for the reader after.
Cost and pace, stage by stage
Only the British part has a printed price: £45 per document by post, or £40 per document next-day if a registered business is sending it. The charge falls on each sheet, so a folder of several records costs several times over. The consular charge and the pace behind it belong to that desk, and they sit well beyond anything settled in Nottingham.