Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR)
Plan for a long-term home.
UK settlement advice and application preparation, with careful review of your residence, absences and supporting evidence.
Fixed Professional Fee £500 / applicationPer person. Government and third-party charges are separate.
Settlement is an important step towards a long-term home. We help you review your residence and absence history, understand the evidence required for your route and prepare your ILR application carefully. You approve the final application before it is submitted.
Indefinite Leave to Remain application support from immigration advisers in Barking, east London. We review your immigration and travel history, assemble the route-specific evidence and prepare your settlement application for approval.
Who this service is for
- You have completed the qualifying period on a route to settlement
- You are applying as a partner, a worker, or on long residence
- Your current leave is approaching its end
- You need your continuous residence checked
Basic eligibility
This is a general guide only. A professional case review is needed to assess your circumstances; a free next-step call explains how to begin.
- You have completed the continuous qualifying period your route requires
- You meet the rolling residence and absence requirements
- You have passed the Life in the UK Test
- You meet the English language requirement
Documents typically required
- Passports covering your full qualifying period
- Evidence of your continuous residence and absences
- Life in the UK Test pass
- Evidence specific to your route (employment, relationship and similar)
Before your first discussion: Prepare a timeline of your UK permissions and a list of trips abroad with departure and return dates. Include previous application decisions and any Life in the UK or English language evidence you already hold. We will confirm the checklist for your route.
How the process works
An initial case review to assess your qualifying period; we confirm the agreed service scope before professional work begins
A detailed checklist, including a rolling absences review
Preparation of your application, with an internal review before submission
Your approval, then support with submission
Updates through to the decision
What settlement actually requires
Settlement is not a reward for time served. It is a set of tests, and you have to pass all of them on the day you apply.
You need an unbroken period on a visa route that leads to settlement — the Home Office calls this your qualifying period. How long it is depends on the route you have been on, and some routes do not count towards settlement at all. You need to have stayed within the limits on time spent outside the UK. You need to show your English is good enough and pass the Life in the UK Test, unless you are exempt. And the Home Office checks your record — convictions, immigration breaches, and whether you have been honest in past applications.
The periods, the limits and the fees are set by government and they are revised. We will not print a number here that may be out of date by the time you read it. We confirm exactly what applies to your route during the agreed professional review, and the current rules are published on GOV.UK so you can check them yourself.
Time outside the UK is counted differently than you think
This is where most people go wrong, and it is almost always an honest mistake.
Absences are not counted per calendar year. They are counted over rolling twelve-month periods. That means every possible twelve-month window inside your qualifying period is looked at on its own. A long trip in November and another one in February sit in two different calendar years, but they fall inside the same rolling window, and that is the window that counts.
People also forget the short trips. A weekend away. A funeral abroad. Three days for work. They add up, and the Home Office can see every one of them.
Some absences may be treated differently — serious illness, a bereavement, or travel your employer required — depending on your route. That is never automatic. It has to be explained and evidenced in the application rather than assumed.
We rebuild your travel history from your passports, your stamps and your own records, then work out where you actually stand before you pay a Home Office fee. If the answer is that you should wait a few months, we will tell you to wait.
How continuous lawful residence gets broken
Continuous lawful residence means you always had permission to be here. Not almost always. Always.
The most common break we see is an application made after the previous visa had already expired. Not by months. By a day, or a few days. People assume there is a grace period, or that the Home Office will overlook it because everything else was in order. In residence terms, the space between the day your leave ended and the day your new application began is a gap — and a gap can reset a clock you have been building for years.
Other things that break it:
- An application rejected as invalid, because a fee was unpaid or biometrics were not given. In law it was never validly made at all.
- Leave curtailed after a job or a course ended, often without the person noticing the new end date.
- Time on a route that does not lead to settlement being counted in by mistake.
- Leaving the UK while an in-country application was pending, which normally withdraws it.
There are limited provisions for short gaps in defined circumstances. They are narrow, and they have to be argued openly in the application rather than hoped over. Hiding a gap is far worse than explaining one.
What we do before anything is submitted
We start with your immigration history, not your paperwork. Passports, every grant of leave, relevant immigration history, and every entry and exit we can establish. The point is to find a problem while it can still be fixed, rather than after a decision.
Then we tell you one of three things. That you are ready. That you are not ready yet, and when you will be. Or that something in your history needs a specialist we are not — in which case we say so and you owe us nothing.
If you go ahead, we prepare the application and the covering letter, set the absence calculation out clearly so the caseworker does not have to work it out for themselves, and address anything awkward in your history head-on. You read and approve the whole application before it is submitted. Nothing goes to the Home Office that you have not seen.
If a British passport is the real goal, it is worth mapping both steps at once rather than discovering the second one late. See British citizenship for what comes after settlement.
What it costs
Our standard professional fee is £500 per application, per person. If a different fee or scope is appropriate, we agree it with you in writing before you proceed. Government and other third-party charges are separate.
You will pay the Home Office separately. There is an application fee for settlement, a charge for the Life in the UK Test if you have not taken it, an English qualification if you need one, and an optional faster decision service. All of those are set by government and all of them move, so we give you the current figures in writing before you commit rather than printing a number here that may already be wrong. Our full breakdown is on the fees page.
Choose your next step
If you need more time on your current route, see visa extension support. If your goal is nationality, read our British citizenship application service.
Our preliminary eligibility checker can help you organise your questions; it does not replace an adviser’s assessment. Read our professional fees and use the visa cost calculator for an estimate of separate government charges. When you are ready, start your application and save your details securely for review.
Prepare your next conversation
Explore settlement guidance, organise your questions and understand the separate charges before deciding how to proceed. A guide or tool result does not establish eligibility.
Frequently asked questions
It depends entirely on which route or routes you have been on. Several routes lead to settlement and the qualifying periods are not the same, some routes cannot be combined, and some do not count towards settlement at all. Rather than give you a figure that may not be yours, we review your immigration history and the relevant rules during the agreed professional assessment before advising on timing.
There is a limit on absences, and it is assessed over rolling twelve-month periods rather than calendar years. That catches people out, because two trips in different calendar years can still fall inside the same rolling window. Limits and the treatment of exceptional absences vary by route, so we calculate your actual position from your travel history instead of estimating it.
Possibly, but not certainly. A late application ends your lawful leave and can break continuous residence, which is why it matters so much. There are limited provisions for short gaps in defined circumstances. It needs assessing properly and disclosing openly in the application, never leaving out and hoping.
No. Time on routes that do not lead to settlement generally does not count, and rules on combining time from different routes are specific. This is one of the most common reasons people apply a year or two before they are actually eligible and lose the fee. We map your whole history first.
The Life in the UK Test is a computer-based test on British history, culture and government, taken at an approved centre. Once you pass it, the pass does not expire. Separately you normally need to evidence your English, though many people are exempt through their nationality or a degree taught in English. We confirm which applies to you.
Sometimes. Dependants can apply alongside you where they have completed their own qualifying period, but their eligibility is assessed separately from yours and their absences are counted separately too. It is common for one family member to be ready and another not to be.
It does not expire by time. It can lapse if you spend a long continuous period living outside the UK, and it can be revoked in limited circumstances such as deception or serious criminality. If you are planning an extended period abroad, get advice before you go rather than after.
We check your immigration history, residence evidence and route requirements before preparing the application. You review and approve the final application before submission.
Take the next step towards settlement
Start your application securely, or book a free 10-minute next-step call to ask about our service first.