In a previous post, we covered the Skilled worker visa as a route to permanent residence in the UK. In this post, we look at attaining permanent residence through what is known as ‘long residence‘.
What is Long Residence?
To put it simply, if you’ve been in the UK legally for 10 continuous years, you may be eligible to apply for indefinite leave to remain (also known as ‘permanent residence’). The words ‘legally‘ and ‘continuous‘ are crucial here. If at any point, you remain in the UK illegally, (i.e beyond the time prescribed by the visa you were issued), it can affect your chances of applying for permanent residence in the future.
Then, there’s the reference to 10 continuous years. Now there are a number of conditions that you must meet to satisfy this condition of 10 continuous years. Some of them are as follows:
- You should not have spent more than 18 months in total outside the UK across the 10 years.
- You should not have spent more than 6 months outside the UK on any one occasion
- You should have leave to remain under one of the permitted visa categories across the 10 years
But one benefit of the third bullet point is that there are multiple visas you can use to count towards your 10 years of continuous residence. It means you can switch from one visa type to another and still meet the ‘continuous’ requirement as long as you adhere to the rules of each visa type. For example, time spent on a student visa or post-study work visa can count towards your 10-year continuous residence but none of the two would count towards qualifying for an ILR application after 5 years.
While the option of long residence will not be feasible for a lot of people, it might be worth exploring for some. An example timeline could look like this:
You come into the UK to start A-levels for 1 or 2 years. Upon completion of your A-levels, you start a Bachelor’s degree program which runs for 3 years. After your Bachelor’s degree, you apply for a Post-study work visa which gives you permission to work without restrictions for 2 years. As the end of your post-study work visa approaches, your efforts to secure a skilled worker visa (formerly Tier 2 General visa) are unsuccessful. So, you enrol for a Master’s degree program which lasts for 1 year. After completing your Master’s program, you decide to enrol for a PhD which would normally run for at least 4 years. By the end of year 3 of your PhD program, you reach the 10-year mark of your stay in the UK and become eligible to apply for settlement through the long residence route.
Of course, if your efforts to switch to the Skilled Worker visa are successful at any point during the timeline, you can make the switch to that visa and become eligible for permanent residence 5 years after.
Is this an option for you? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
DISCLAIMER – Information provided here is not legal advice.