Apostille vs. Embassy legalisation for Togo
The short arrangement gives a document one certificate and treats the matter as closed between treaty countries. The long one keeps officials of the receiving country in the picture, reading the file in Britain before it means anything abroad. An apostille for Togo does not belong to the short arrangement, so this route runs over weeks and through several hands rather than one.
Togo's Hague status & what it means
Togo has not joined the Hague Apostille Convention. The practical consequence is duration: a second body, a second charge, a second wait and a gap in the middle where the paper sits with you. Long jobs are the ones people lose track of, and this one has more moving parts than the errand most readers expect when they start it.
Keep a record as you go
Write it as you go rather than afterwards, because the details that matter are boring ones: how many sheets, which day, which address, what was paid. Plymouth Register Office at Derriford Park issues certified copies of birth, marriage and death records, and the date of that order is worth noting first, since every later stage depends on the copy it produces.
The value shows up in the second half. When a stage seems slow, the only useful question is when the paper actually left you and in what condition, and memory is poor at both. A single page of notes also survives you: another person can pick the job up, count the documents and see where it stands, which is worth having if the deadline belongs to someone else.
Cost & timing for this route
The published British charge is £45 for each document by post at the Legalisation Office, or £40 for each on the next-day route open to registered businesses. An apostille from the United Kingdom to Togo is not the finishing certificate here, so a consular charge follows on the receiving side, and neither that figure nor its turnaround is set out on this page. Record both when you meet them.
Destination-specific requirements
Togo requires consular legalisation, arranged with its officials in Britain once the British certification is complete. Each document is handled on its own at both stages, so a count written down at the start stays useful right through to the end. Prepare clean certified copies, keep the originals at home, and let the file you keep do the remembering for you.