Legalising a Diploma from Manchester
No public register holds a degree, so no government office can print you another one. The body that made the award is the only source of a signature the chain can work from, which makes that request the opening move and the part most likely to hold everything up. Working out how to legalize a Diploma starts there rather than with any office in the city.
Legalised is not the same as recognised
Two different questions get muddled here, and the confusion costs people months. One asks whether the paper is genuine, and stamps answer it. The other asks what a British award is equal to in another country's system, and stamps say nothing about it at all. A fully stamped file can still meet a reader who wants the award mapped onto their own scale.
That mapping is done by whoever is reading the file, and it usually turns on the length of the course, the level of the award and the marks behind it. So a transcript alongside the award is often the more useful sheet, and it goes through the stamping in the same run rather than as a separate errand months later.
The route from Manchester, step by step
The awarding university or college signs a copy or a statement of the award, and that signature is what the next desk certifies. The FCDO Legalisation Office at PO Box 6255, Milton Keynes MK10 1XX serves the whole country from a post box, so living in Manchester alters neither the fee nor the speed of that stage.
Manchester Register Office at Heron House, 47 Lloyd Street, Manchester M2 5LE has no role at any point, since its registers cover civil records only. Where a mission closes the file, that stage comes last and works from the British certificate. To legalize a Diploma in Manchester is therefore an errand run almost entirely by post.
Cost, turnaround and translation
The British stage costs around £25 a sheet and takes 7–10 business days, or 2–3 business days on the express route. A consular fee and a consular wait follow wherever a country wants its own mark. The awarding body's own charge and its own queue sit ahead of both, and that queue is the one people underestimate.
Where the reader works in another language, the award and the transcript are translated as one job and bound in before the stamping begins. Nothing on this route fixes a language and no stamp reads the words on the page. Doing it in the right order keeps one set of dates across the whole bundle.