Kim BriscoeA Norwich family have told of their devastation after a visa wrangle meant they lost every penny they had spent on what was supposed to be their first family holiday abroad.Kim Briscoe

A Norwich family have told of their devastation after a visa wrangle meant they lost every penny they had spent on what was supposed to be their first family holiday abroad.

Carly and Hakan Mugulday applied for a holiday visa for Hakan, who is Turkish, so they could take a trip to Majorca with their daughter Alicia, 3, and 10-month-old son Kaya.

Mr Mugulday, 31, who works for Serco at the Norfolk and Norfolk University Hospital and has indefinite leave to remain in the UK with his wife, had to go to Soho Square in London to apply for the visa from the Spanish Consulate and pay the �100 fee.

A couple of weeks later got his passport back in the post, along with a stamp in the visa section and a document written in Spanish taped inside.

But when the family turned up at Gatwick airport at 1am on April 27 for their flight, they were made to wait for hours before being told his visa had been refused and they would not be able to claim back any of the �1,000 they paid for the holiday.

Mrs Mugulday, 23, from Beech Drive in the Golden Triangle, Norwich, said: 'If we had known it had been refused then we would never have gone to Gatwick and we could have cancelled the holiday or re-applied for the visa if there were document errors.

'The visa stamp looked like it had been passed and the letter taped into the passport was written in Spanish, so how we were to know?

'My three-year-old daughter had been so excited about going on an aeroplane and was devastated when we had to come home instead.

'The holiday was just over a grand but it's not just that - it's �100 for a week's parking at the airport and all the things we had bought for the holiday.

'We also had to pay for applying for the visa and travelling down to London.'

Mrs Mugulday, who works as a ward assistant at Hellesdon Hospital, said since getting married in January 2007 in Turkey they had spent around �4,000 on visas, and would now be applying to get British citizenship for Hakan in the hope that it will end the constant cost and hassle of getting visas.

She said: 'We're a family of four. My husband has two children, a job, a house, pays tax and we can't even go on holiday. It really makes you sick and there's nowhere to get help.'

The Spanish Embassy was unavailable to comment.