Embassy legalisation for use in Ghana
A paper going to Ghana carries a consular stage, so plan for three desks rather than one. Embassy attestation for Ghana is the closing event on the file, and it can only sit on top of a British certificate that is already there. That fixed order is the single most useful thing to understand about this corridor.
Fixed order has a price. Because each desk works on the mark beneath it, the file moves in one direction only, and any problem discovered at the end is a problem discovered after every fee has been paid. Nothing is refunded, nothing is corrected in place, and the run simply starts over.
What none of the desks looks at
This is where people are caught out. Not one of the three offices reads your paper for sense. They check signatures, seals and each other, and they are extremely good at that narrow job. A misspelt surname, a swapped day and month, or a summary record standing in for a full one passes every stage cleanly and is refused by the reader in Ghana.
The Birmingham → Ghana route step by step
Where the paper is a civil record, Birmingham Register Office at Holliday Street, Birmingham B1 1TJ can print a fresh certified copy of a birth, marriage or death entry, and that copy travels in place of the one you keep. Where the paper is a private one — a contract, a company resolution, a signed statement — it is signed in front of a notary or solicitor whose signature the next office already recognises.
From there the road is the same for both. The file reaches the FCDO Legalisation Office, PO Box 6255, Milton Keynes MK10 1XX, which adds the British certificate by post, and it goes on to the mission handling Ghanaian papers for the closing stamp. Anyone arranging embassy legalization for Ghana from Birmingham is arranging post, not appointments.
Cost & timing for this route
The bill has two halves and only one of them is knowable in advance. Around £45 covers the British certificate, and the consular fee on top is set by the mission rather than by any price list here. The British leg runs 7–10 business days, or 2–3 business days on the express route, and the closing desk works to a diary of its own.
The check that saves the run
So do the reading before the signing. Put the sheet next to the passport, the application form, or whatever the Ghanaian office already has on file, and make the two agree on every name, date and spelling. It costs nothing and it is the only stage in this route where a mistake can still be fixed with a pen rather than a second set of fees.