Calculating periods of residence When Making Your Permanent Residence Application: Why should you calculate period of residence in the UK? or, rather, why you need to concentrate on calculating all your absences from the UK?
This is important for the purpose of making your Permanent Residence application.
In today’s blog post I’ll explain a number of things:
- the definition of continuity;
- I’ll explain what evidence must be provided to prove this continuity of residence;
- you’ll find out when this continuity of residence will be considered as to be broken;
- I’ll give examples of permitted absences; and finally
- I’ll explain the rules about periods of imprisonment;
OK, let me begin with giving you the definition of continuity of residence in the UK:
By law, you will be living continuously in the UK if you have not spent out of the UK 6 months or more in total in any year.
However, when calculating periods of residence when making your permanent residence application the decision maker will disregard these absences, if
- time spent outside the UK was on compulsory military service
- or there was any single period of time that you spent outside the UK for less than 12 months. If it was for an important reason including pregnancy, childbirth, serious illness, study, vocational training or an overseas posting
Broken continuity of residence
Continuity of residence is broken when a:
- person serves a sentence of imprisonment
- person gets a deportation or exclusion order
- or s/he is removed from the UK
Periods of imprisonment
The UKVI will not taken into consideration periods of imprisonment by EEA nationals or their family members for the purposes of gaining a right of permanent residence. Also, periods of residence both before and after prison cannot be aggregated and counted towards the 5 year qualifying period for permanent residence. For example, a person who resided in the UK for 3 years, spent one year in prison and then a further 2 years following their release from prison, cannot aggregate the periods before and after prison to count towards the 5 year qualifying period for permanent residence. Any qualifying period would, therefore, effectively re-start at the point they leave prison and start residing in accordance with the EEA Regulations.
The 3-months initial period would not come into play following release from prison. Therefore the person would need to evidence that they began exercising Treaty rights immediately after their prison sentence.
Calculating Periods of Residence When Making Your Permanent Residence Application
Evidence of a continuous 5 year period of residence in the UK can include:
- tenancy agreements
- utility bills
- bank statements
- school or nursery letters or immunisation records in support of applications for children
This is not a complete list of evidence that you can submit with the application. So, if there is any doubt whether you’ve gathered enough evidence – gather more documents from the official sources.
And I would like to finish this blog post by showing you how you should calculate your days of absences from the UK.
Suppose you were absent for a weekend in France. You left on Friday, 1st September and returned on Sunday, 3rd September. How many days were you absent from the UK? The correct answer is 1 day because the decision maker will not count your date of departure and your date of arrival towards your absence periods.