Not physically present on date of application 5 years ago

HI

Can any one help. I have applied for naturalisation as British citizenship on first of march application received on 3rd March 2015. Money taken and acknowledgement received on 09th of march. I sent application by not using NCS which probably was a mistake. I realised later that I was not present in uk from 26 feb to 24 march 2010. Total no of days i was absent from uk during last 5 years is 65 days only. I wanted to know what happens if you were not physically present 5 years ago on date your application was received. Do they refuse the application or they defer the application? Any one can help on this as worried about losing money.

Unfortunately your application will be refused.

Application fee will also be lost. The form and guidance clearly state this requirement.

ATIFPHYSIO wrote:HI

Can any one help. I have applied for naturalisation as British citizenship on first of march application received on 3rd March 2015. Money taken and acknowledgement received on 09th of march. I sent application by not using NCS which probably was a mistake. I realised later that I was not present in uk from 26 feb to 24 march 2010. Total no of days i was absent from uk during last 5 years is 65 days only. I wanted to know what happens if you were not physically present 5 years ago on date your application was received. Do they refuse the application or they defer the application? Any one can help on this as worried about losing money.

As according to rules I am afraid it will be refused, you better withdraw it.

Wont help to withdraw as fee has already been taken

Unfortunately this is a pass/fail requirement and there is no discretion of case worker so it will be refused.

See also Chapter 18 > Annex B: residence requirements > 3.

One observation (exception) related to this requirement, which I was not aware of before is point 3.3 (page 4) under the link vinny has posted...

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... 141212.pdf

Good digging, he may get some chance now

even though Royal mail delivers the home office with your application on a certain date, your application details are not entered into home office's database that very same day.

it can take anything from 2 days to a week in order to enter your application details into their computers.
(This information was provided to me by home office customer care centre )

Now the question is which day to be considered as the application received day?
The day when royal mail delivered application or
The day when they fed our application in their database and generated a reference number for our application ???

How can we possible know when they get around to entering the application into their database? That doesn't make much sense to me.

I just had an NCS appointment. I told them I was out of the country 5 years ago +5 days from that day. They responded with "Thats ok. We're sending your application off today and the Home Office should have it tomorrow."

They certainly didn't respond with "Oops! They might enter it into their database when you were out of the country! Bad luck for you!"

wmazhar wrote:Good digging, he may get some chance now

Yes, I hope so. Hopefully the two month window indicated does help the OP.

You should not be worried about when your application is received and when UKBA entered into their system, they surely already have these questions before us and they know when it is received and when they entered into the database.

also please check the links provided in this thread, this will make the picture more clearer.

cs95tdg wrote:One observation (exception) related to this requirement, which I was not aware of before is point 3.3 (page 4) under the link vinny has posted...

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... 141212.pdf

It seems that there might be a chance. Will you be able to elaborate that a little bit more . I was away from 26 feb to 23 march 2010 so if they consider my application somewhere in april 2015 does it mean i will have a chance of re-declaration as mentioned in that rule?

ATIFPHYSIO wrote:

cs95tdg wrote:One observation (exception) related to this requirement, which I was not aware of before is point 3.3 (page 4) under the link vinny has posted...

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... 141212.pdf

It seems that there might be a chance. Will you be able to elaborate that a little bit more . I was away from 26 feb to 23 march 2010 so if they consider my application somewhere in april 2015 does it mean i will have a chance of re-declaration as mentioned in that rule?

Yes, the way I read the clause, the 2 month window that would apply to you when it comes to re-declaration begins from March 3rd, when the HO first received your application (to May 2nd). I'm not sure how they would practically handle this, as there was a fee & AN form change which came into effect from April 6th. I suspect you'll have wait to see what decision the HO come back with first and then depending on that establish next steps.