ILR - absences from the UK: PEOs, weekends & crown servi

I was recently granted ILR at a PEO, by virtue of that wonderful HSMP Forum Judicial Review, and thought it might be useful to outline how my days of absence were considered. I had 188 days out of the country in the four years since arriving in the UK and applying for ILR.

After each arrival and exit was manually entered into a computer in front of me, I was initially told that I was 8 nights over the 90 night limit for processing at PEOs and that an application would have to be submitted through the mail.

I am a Civil Servant and pointed out that about 25 of these nights were as a result of being on UK government foreign delegations which I thought should be discounted given the various legislative provisions for Designated Crown Service. This resulted in some discussion which led to an agreement that my weekends out of the country would be dropped from the total instead. This seemed much easier that thinking about how to deal with the idea that the UK had officially asked one of its immigrants to be out of the country - which is essentially what my work trips amounted to - and so, with much reason in my view, should be allowed the same treatment as immigrants working in British Embassies, military bases, or on secondment from the Civil Service to international agencies. I was quite interested in pursuing this point as a matter of principle, but didn't need to as the I fell under this supposed PEO limit once the weekends were discounted.

The most difficult thing seemed to be that all of the above calculations required re-entering each trip out of the country and manually checking which days were weekends. It would make jobs of the PEO staff much easier if applicants could do this for them by submitting applications on-line before the PEO interview.

So, should you have near 90 nights of UK absence, I would arrive with two attachments (one showing weekends included and the other without). If you are a civil servant who has been absent from the UK for work, I would point this out before the official starts entering all of your absences. A nice letter from one's manager might help make this point, as would being able to quote the relevant sections regarding Designated Crown Service.

Londonimmigrant: first time i'm hearing of a "90 night limit" for PEOs. do you mean 90 days of absence per year or in total? can you please explain this bit further?

I've got 98 days of absence in 4 years, not counting dates of arrival or departure, and an appointment booked for next month. I've always been under the impression - matched by many people's stories on these forums - that the ceiling for absence was 180 days, for ILR.

londonimmigrant wrote:After each arrival and exit was manually entered into a computer in front of me, I was initially told that I was 8 nights over the 90 night limit for processing at PEOs and that an application would have to be submitted through the mail.
.....
So, should you have near 90 nights of UK absence, I would arrive with two attachments (one showing weekends included and the other without)..

sac,

to be honest, i can't remember but i think the official at the PEO counted up 188 and seeing that it was over 180, halved it by counting only the nights (plus rejecting a couple of day trips out of the country). The substantive issue was that i was about 8 days over regardless, as halving it still seemed to be over some sort of other limit for the number of nights out. Sorry for the confusion. I think you and the other people are right to express the limit that matters as being 180 days in total.

With 98 days, i think you will be fine. Although, it wouldn't hurt to know how many of those days cover weekends before turning up.

regards, londonimmigrant.