kamoe wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 12:37 pm
Think about it. What is April 1st + 3 months? July 1st (or, on the safe side, roughly June 30th).
This notice is there simply to avoid anyone having a Family Permit with a validity date beyond June 30th, to mistakenly believe they are able to apply after June 30th, just because their Family Permit is valid.
In other words, this is another way to say "Remember that the deadline to apply is June 30th, no matter the validity of your Family Permit".
kamoe, thank you for your input however I think you have misunderstood the government's guidance. The text clearly says:
The deadline for applying is 30 June 2021. You must usually have started living in the UK by 31 December 2020.
The deadlines are different in some situations, for example if:
- you’re applying to join a close family member
- the family member of a British citizen (‘Surinder Singh’ applications)
- you stop being exempt from immigration control
The bullet points above clearly define the exceptions to the 30 June deadline. When you click on the link for "you're applying to join a close family member", it then takes you to the information I quoted in the previous post, where it clearly says:
If you arrive in the UK on or after 1 April 2021, you must apply to the EU Settlement Scheme within 3 months of the date you arrive in the UK.
Note the words "on or after" and the words "within 3 months of the
date you arrive". This language tells me that if I arrived on April 1st, the deadline would be approx. July 1st; if I arrived on May 15th, the deadline would be August 15th. If the deadline was universally June 30th for this specific category of people (those "applying to join a close family member"), then they would have clearly indicated so instead of beating around the bush. They did
not say that the deadline is within 3 months of 1st April, but rather "within 3 months of the date you arrive in the UK", which could be "on or after" 1 April.
Based on their language, there is effectively no deadline (for now) for family members to join EU citizens who were living in the UK before 31 December 2020
and had received pre-settled or settled status, as long as the family member applies for and is issued an EUSS FP. The EUSS FP page also states that there's no deadline to apply for the EUSS FP. There's also no reason to give out an immigrant-type entry clearance and yet disallow people from applying to remain permanently. Hence it makes sense that they allow for an EUSS application within 3 months of entry if an individual arrives anytime after 1 April.
You can also refer to the London government webpage here -
https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/eu ... ace-period - specifically the section titled "Is the 30 June 2021 deadline the same for everyone?"
This is not a loophole - the UK has essentially opened a family reunification mechanism that does not have a deadline provided that the related EU member was in the UK before 31 Dec 2020, and applied for their EUSS before 30 June 2021.
My original question was more so to understand how my EUSS FP expiry of Aug 10 interacts with "you must apply to the EU Settlement Scheme within 3 months of the date you arrive in the UK". The more I read about it, the FP expiry date probably has no bearing on the actual EUSS application.
Crosshaven wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 9:32 am
I would not like to be counting on any kind of extensions/special circumstances to deviate from this deadline, if I were you.
crosshaven, I'm not referring to covid-19 related extensions / special circumstances - I'd agree that those are a coin toss. Rather, I am referring to the text "if you arrive in the UK on or after 1 April 2021, you must apply to the EU Settlement Scheme within 3 months of the date you arrive in the UK".
In any case, since I seem to be getting a lot of push-back on this, I have reached out to the eu settlement scheme resolution center to clarify and I will post their feedback for the benefit of anyone else in a similar situation.