Lost passport once, and applying for ILR.

I've been here as a student for 10 years, and I am now eligible to apply for ILR.
I have always abide the rules of being here such as having a valid visa.
However, I lost my passport when I was young and this had one or two years of my track record.
Will this be a big issue when to apply for ILR? If so, what could I do about it? I read that there were similar cases as mine and they asked for SAR? which I have not got a clue what it is, and also are there any other ways that I could prove that I was in the UK.

In addition, I could have applied ILR in January of 2016, but as I have exceed the dates I am applying it a bit later this September. The reason I had exceeded the dates was due to having to go back my home country during holidays of school as I had no place to stay and at the time I was not a legal adult. Will the home office take this as a valid reason?

Thank you for your help in advance.
This will be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards.

Hello Slay94,

Congrats on your eligibility for ILR. First off, relax. Passports do get misplaced regularly.

Re the 1st part of your question, the HO requires that you enclose all passports for ILR purposes. But they also have a section that you can fill in, if as in your case, you are not in possession of your passport. You will have to explain what happened in that section on the application form, and then supply other indicators of UK residence as requested therein. I understand some are things like utility bills, police report, (if you made any), etc.
Re SAR, a Subject Access Request is basically a FOI request made to the HO, which requires them by law to send 'requestable' documents they hold on you. This includes copies of your applications, decisions, etc. It will cost you £10, and you get a response in about 40 days. Please follow link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... mmigration

Re 3rd part of your question, it does not matter the reasons you couldn't apply for ILR after Jan 2016. Once you are eligible, you can decide to hold it off until you are ready. So long as your stay have been continuous, go ahead and apply now that you are ready (if you are, lol).

Good luck.

Thank you for your reply.

You have clarified some issues for me.
I went to a boarding school therefore I do not have utility bills to prove my UK residence. Will school reports be valid enough?
For SAR, as I do not have the all passports, will this limit to view my full documentation? After I get this, will this prove my residence of UK?

I am very concerned because my brother applied for ILR and he exceeded his dates due to University Research by a small margin, and this was explained from Imperial college which he goes to but he was rejected.

I want to make everything perfect before I apply

Thank you for your help again.

Yong Kim