CHANGES TO 10-YEAR LONG RESIDENCE VISA ROUTE
The 10-year long residence visa route is open to people who have been in the UK for at least 10 years to enable them to settle or, in certain cases, to get further leave to remain. The Immigration Rules were updated on the 11th of April 2024, and a new appendix to the rules, labelled “Immigration Rules Appendix Long Residence” has been added to cover applications made on this route. Prior to this, applications were covered by a different, and harder to find, area of the Immigration Rules.
The new appendix does not simply move the relevant rules into one, more accessible, place but also enacts changes to the route which could have lasting effects for potential applicants. The largest and potentially most wide-reaching change is that this visa route is no longer open to those seeking to rely on a period of 10-years long residence in the past. This is because the continuous residence requirement is now to be assessed under the provisions of a separate appendix to the Immigration Rules, “Appendix Continuous Residence”. This appendix specifies that the continuous residence period “will be calculated by counting back from which ever of the following dates is the most beneficial to the applicant:
- The date of application; or
- Any date up to 28 days after the date of application; or
- The date of decision; or
- For a person applying for settlement on the UK Ancestry route, the date of their last grant of permission”
Effectively, this change rules out applicants that may seek to rely on a historic period of long residence. The Home Office is clearly here seeking to narrow down the pool of potential applicants.
In addition to the above, applicants now need to have their current valid permission under the Immigration Rules for at least one year before making an application if their current grant of leave was granted after the 11th of April 2024. This means that, if an applicant has a valid grant of leave, awarded on the 12th of April 2024, and will have been in the UK for 10 years on the 13th of April 2024, they can no longer make an application under this route on the 13th of April 2024. Instead, this applicant would have to wait until the 12th of April 2025 before making an application. Thankfully, this requirement does not apply to those still on leave granted prior to the 11th of April 2024. If such people have spent 10 years in the UK validly and lawfully, they can still make applications when they reach their 10-year milestone, subject to the other requirements of the route.
The provision above is related to a further codification regarding those on short-term student and visit visas. This is a change that the Home Office have already made but it is now clear in the Immigration Rules that time spent on valid visit visas, short-term student visas or seasonal worker visas does not count as part of a qualifying period for long residence.
Time on these visas is not the only thing that will break continuous residence. Any time spent on the Isle of Man, or the Channel Islands is not treated as time spent in the UK and will not count towards the relevant 10-year period. Additionally, time spent in the UK where an applicant is overstaying a visa will not count towards the relevant period for this route, even if that period of overstaying is covered by paragraph 39E of the Immigration Rules (Exceptions for overstayers). Time spent outside the UK due to COVID19 however, is not counted as a break in continuous residence. Helpfully for EEA nationals and their family members, if they were exercising their right to reside in the UK under the free movement provisions, this will count towards time spent in the UK. Previously this had been mentioned in guidance published by the Home Office but is now codified under the rules.
A further change to the rules concerns how absences are counted in the period constituting the 10-years of long residence. Previously, applicants must not have been outside the UK for more than 548 days overall, and 184 days at any one time. Going forwards, applicants must now simply not spend more than 180 days outside the UK in any 12-month period, much like the requirements for other types of settlement.
This change, however, is only relevant for periods of leave granted from the 11th of April 2024 onwards; it is not being applied retroactively. Instead, any absences in periods of leave prior to the 11th of April 2024 will be treated under the old rules and so subject to the 548-day provision. This means that a person who applied for settlement under this route having spent time in the UK prior to the 11th of April 2024 and after this date, will have their absences treated differently depending on where they fall in relation to this date.
Finally, the English language requirement in the new appendix is assessed with reference to Appendix English Language. This could prove beneficial for certain applicants as it will allow them to rely on GCSE or A level qualifications to meet the requirements.
If an applicant does not meet the English language requirement or the knowledge of life in the UK requirement, but does meet the suitability, qualifying period, and continuous residence requirements, they may be able to apply for temporary permission to stay on the Long Residence route instead of settlement.