Settlement Family Life

The two new family life appendices only affect people seeking ILR on the ten-year family route. Appendix FM still applies to those on the five-year route.

Appendix Settlement Family Life introduces a new “continuous residence requirement” for ILR as a partner or parent on the ten-year route. Where previously there was no need for applicants to have spent a certain amount of time physically in the UK, now they are limited to a maximum of 180 days’ absence in any 12-month period. This appears to move the goalposts significantly for people who have never previously had to worry about the length of their time abroad.

It is mitigated somewhat by an exception for absences due to work, study, or supporting family overseas as long as the UK remains the applicant’s place of permanent residence and they maintain a family life here. Other exceptions include time spent out of the UK due to a pandemic or life-threatening illness. (These exceptions are in paragraph CR 2.3 of Appendix Continuous Residence, as amended by the statement of changes.)

Additionally, absences pre-dating the new appendix will be disregarded if they were followed by a grant of permission on private or family life grounds. In practice, this means that the first round of ten-year route settlement applicants need only worry about excess absences during their last period of permission; they may as a result need to obtain a further extension, but won’t have to start the ten-year qualification period all over again.

As mentioned above, applicants can now combine periods of permission in different private and family routes (including Appendix FM) in order to reach the requisite ten-year period for settlement: see paragraph SETF 11.6. They also face tougher suitability requirements, as summarised above.

Appendix Relationship with Partner replaces the relationship requirements in Appendix FM. Although initially applying only to those seeking ILR on the ten-year partner route, the explanatory memorandum expresses an intention to extend it to “other routes” in future.