English Test requirement

[JacoDP]

Morning all,
I am nearing my ILR application and it is pretty straightforward for myself.
The tricky bit for me is what to do with my wife's PBS dependent visa?
She arrived 4 months after me in the UK and her Visa expires 4 months before she can apply for ILR.
We will have to use the express service to get my ILR decision as timelines are just to close for comfort.

My question is the following:
1) Do we apply for my wife for a extension under the current visa she holds which is PBS dependant or do we need to switch now to a family visa.
2) If we switch to a family visa will the clock be reset on her time spent in the UK?
3) If we apply for PBS extention, can this be only for 1 year or does it have to be 3 years?

Looking forward to any help, this forum helped us greatly in the past.

Best wishes
Jaco

[secret.simon]

Assuming that you are applying for ILR based on your Tier 2/Skilled Worker visa (and not on Long Residence), your wife can continue applying for PBS Dependent visa until her own ILR.

Applying for a family spouse visa will reset her clock to zero.

You can't choose the period of extension for the PBS Dependent visa (1 year or 3 years). It will be issued for (and you will have to pay for, including the IHS) the full 3 year visa.

What you can do is apply for the PBS dependent visa extension a just few days before the expiry of her current visa, then, if that extension application has not been approved by the date she is eligible for her ILR, make the application to vary it to ILR. You will end up having to pay for two applications and will likely only get a partial refund (I'm not sure if the IHS will be refunded in such a case).

[JacoDP]

Thank you so much this is much clearer now.

[JacoDP]

Good morning members,

I will be doing my ILR application myself in November and I want to see if anyone can confirm if my Englist test I used for my existing visa will be ok.

It expired in 2018 and I did the general training test with a IELTS centre. IELTS is still on the Gov list so am I correct in assuming I don't need to redo a test?