Hi All,
I would like to share our recent success at gaining ILR for my wife’s SET (M) application.
This was via the five-year route to settlement as the spouse of a UK national, (me as sponsor).
TL;DR – This is a long post, and the reason for that is that we included a lot of detail in the application. We tried to avoid spurious information that would not be helpful, and instead aimed to utilise the information on hand to bolster the application.
The application was made under the new system, and relied upon income under Category F, as we are both employed by our limited company, taking salary and dividends. I am the sole director of the company, and as it meets the definition of a limited company under paragraph 9 of the FM-SE annex we provided the following list of documents. My hope is that others find this of use.
First to note, when filling out the new SET (M) online form, there is or was no associated guidance, and we used the previously existing guidance for the older form as reference.
Another point to note; for the financial requirement we added details of both of our salaries, and the dividends received from the limited company. I additionally checked the box that asked if I was a director of a UK limited company. We did not specify any income as derived via self-employment, as neither of us are self-employed, but rather we are both employees and shareholders of our company.
We added both salaries and dividends to meet the financial requirement, as our salaries alone were too low to do so. This is probably a common scenario for people running limited companies who take low salaries and greater dividends.
With that in mind, the financial year relied upon was the companies last full financial year.
This ran from 25th October 2017 – 31st October 2018, and we applied in March 2019. Therefore, when including bank statements, we did so from October 2017 to March 2019.
If you bank with HSBC, be warned, they are really slow at sending out duplicate statements that span two years. It took almost two weeks for the statements to arrive from them.
Required and suggested documents from the auto-generated checklist:
• Passport for applicant
• Passport for partner
• Signed partner declaration
• Personal bank statements for applicant and partner, corresponding to the same periods as the payslips showing the salary has been paid into an account in the name of the person or in the name of the person and their partner jointly.
We included bank statements that covered the period of the limited companies last financial year, to the date of the application. This showed the salary payments and dividend payments for the company financial year relied upon, and continuing payments highlighting continuing employment.
• Share certs for both of us detailing our shareholdings of the company. These were generated via FreeAgent (accountancy software), I believe. The share holdings are also present in the articles of incorporation filed with Companies House, as we included that info later.
• Proof of property ownership from the owner of the property you live in.
I own the house but we both live there, therefore I included a recent mortgage statement, a copy of the completion letter and a copy of the HM Land Registry register of title. The mortgage statement took about a week to turn up. The land registry title copy was available online, I think I paid about £10 for it. It showed the charge for the mortgage and my name as proprietor of the property.
• A letter signed by myself, stating that my wife can live in the property.
• Payslips covering any period of salaried employment (current and previous) in the period of 12 months prior to the date of application for both of us. These were just the payslips generated from FreeAgent. Along with these I asked our company accountant to state that they handle the payroll for the company and that the payslips were genuine. I as company director also wrote a letter on a company letter headed template attesting that the payslips were true and genuine. I also included another letter, again writing as the company director, showing the RTI IR marks from HMRC for each salary payment, as evidence of the payroll. This info was available from FreeAgent. This may well be overkill but at least it put to bed any question about the payslips being genuine.
• Documents supporting any other reason to stay in the UK.
For this we included our sons birth cert, along with a load of family photos of us three over the last couple of years. I added the photos together in PDF documents so as to make it easier to view for the case worker and to reduce the number of files to upload to the UKVCAS site.
• Evidence of sponsor/partners settled status in the UK.
For this we included my birth cert, which I had to get a copy of from the local authority. It was about £30 and took a week to arrive.
• Copy of our marriage certificate.
• Life in the UK test pass notification letter.
• English language test pass certificate.
We had used a Trinity college B1 SELT test for the previous round of FLR(M), and although it was now expired it was still listed as an accepted test. There was no immediate requirement to include the actual cert, but just the certification number on the application form, although we added it for completeness.
• Current BRP of the applicant.
• Employers letter for the applicant (wife) and a letter for the partner (me) confirming the employment.
I wrote two letters, one for each of us on company headed paper detailing the points asked for, and signed both. Additionally, I asked the company accountant for reference letters for both of us, which again echoed what was included in the employment letters.
• Dividend vouchers for the applicant, and dividend vouchers for partner.
These were again the generated dividend declaration/vouchers from FreeAgent, covering the period we relied upon to meet the financial requirement, so the company’s last financial year, to the date of application. Along with these I included a letter as company director stating that the dividend vouchers were genuine.
• Six letters addressed to you and your partner over the last 2.5 years.
For this we used two council tax statements, three Santander bank statements for our joint account, and two water bills. We also had some additional proofs individually. These were more or less spread out at four month intervals.
Evidence as directed by FM-SE for a director of a limited company based in the UK.
• Company tax return (CT600) for the last full financial year.
Our company’s financial year ran from 25th October 2017 – 31st October 2018, and we applied in March 2019. The company financial year spanned two accounting periods, so we included both CT600 parts, and the associated IR marks from HMRC.
The accountant provided this information for us.
• Evidence of registration with the Registrar of Companies at Companies House.
For this we included the certificate of incorporation for the company from Companies House, and the filed articles of incorporation again from Companies House. These are both free to obtain online, and downloadable as PDF’s.
If the company is not required to produce annual audited accounts, unaudited accounts for the last full financial year and an accountant’s certificate of confirmation, from an accountant who is a member of a UK Recognized Supervisory Body (as defined in the Companies Act 2006) or who is a member of the Institute of Financial Accountants.
I realised that the accounts for our company had been made up by our accountant who is AAT qualified. This in itself isn’t a problem, but the requirement for an accountant’s certificate of confirmation caused a problem, as AAT is not listed as a UK recognized supervisory body. I reached out to local accountants who were listed with an approved body, ICAEW and ACCA mainly, to help with this, and most unsurprisingly wouldn’t attest to accounts prepared by another accountant. I did however find several individuals and firms who would in essence redo the accounts independently and provide the required confirmation. The fee I paid for this was £300. In the end I didn’t require the use of the second set of accounts, as the accountancy firm used for the company had someone on staff who is ACCA certified and provided the required confirmation, along with their ACCA membership number.
• Corporate bank accounts covering the same 12-month period as the company tax return (CT600).
Got Barclays to send over a duplicate set of company bank account statements. Took about a week for these to arrive. These are accompanied by a cover letter stating that the statements are copies but genuine.
• A current appointment report from companies house.
You can get this for free online at the old companies house website.
• Additionally included the VAT certificate, and copies of the VAT submissions to HMRC for the last financial year, and the first period for the current year. Also included the IR marks showing receipt of the submissions by HMRC, and again this information was available in FreeAgent.
• P60’s for the last tax year for my wife and myself. These were included as they partially covered the last full financial year for the company, so at least showed some salary for the previous tax year.
Other things included:
I wrote another personal letter as the sponsor, FAO the case worker explaining how the financial requirement was met, and that the income relied upon was as category F.
I also listed details of each payslip period, the corresponding bank statement page and payment date, along with the transaction reference. Likewise, I did this for the dividend payments. This was to aid the case worker in finding the evidence required. No idea if it helped but presumably it didn’t hinder.
Tips and advice:
Start earlier than you think you might need to gather evidence and documents. Sometimes things take a while to turn up in the post and this adds to the anxiety. Also, do check regarding your accountant’s qualification for the certification. It took me approximately two weeks to get a new set of accounts drawn up, which ultimately were not used.
Try to relax and don’t get too wound up. There is a lot of evidence required when meeting the financial requirement via Category G or F but it is possible.
Notes about the application process and UKVCAS.
The online application form was actually not terrible. We worked on the application at night for about a week, making sure we had answered everything as needed. With no obvious guidance for the online version of set (m) we used the existing notes for the older form.
My wife included information about her life here, friends and groups she had joined, and our life with our son.
At the end of the application you get a choice of going to a PSC or using the new service. In reality, all PSC’s are closed and it’s only the new service available. We chose to use the super priority service and make a local booking for a UKVCAS center. This center never had any available appointments, and we ended up booking a premium lounge slot on a Saturday morning at the center in Tower Hill, London.
Before the appointment I scanned and uploaded all the documents mentioned above on to the UKVCAS site.
At the appointment my wife had her biometrics taken, and they checked our documents again. We had to pay £35 extra for this. All the paper copies and originals of documents were handed back, including passports.
My wife received an email from UKVI Sheffield on the Monday, about midday saying the application had been successful, and the BRP followed about a week later.
Overall, we felt the new service was actually fairly good, although more expensive than the previous setup. One thing I really didn’t like was the £2 a minute ‘help’ line from Sopra Steria if you had questions or issues. After paying so much I feel that it is wrong to charge people who are forced to use the service so much for simple queries.
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