Citizenship - Employment history question

Hello All,

I am applying for my BC and have one small query, if you could please answer this, i would really appreciate it

10 year Employment History:

When i first came to the UK in 2008 as a student from India, i did many part time roles through various agencies but i cannot remember all of them, nor i remember the dates i worked with each of these various roles. I called these companies, some of them have ceased trading or changed their trading name and some of them cannot provide details going back more than 5 years. I called HMRC and even they can provide details of last 4 years only. With HMRC i have done the SAR request as well, But it will take them 28 minimum working days to get the info to me. So i have information of my employment from 2010. But between 2008 to 2010, i have no ideas of the dates and companies i worked for. I do not want to provide any wrong dates of my employments that i cannot remember and complicate the application. I can provide all the information from 2013, as since then im doing my own business here (was on tier 1 entrepreneur then) and my accountant has all the details of my employment on file. Between 2010 to 2013, i worked one job, so this is easy to fill in.

So the question is should i give information of my employment from 2010 till date on the online form and not include or mention anything from 2008 to 2010? Or

Mention all employment history from 2010 till date and write a covering letter about all the part time jobs i had from 2008 to 2010(not fill in these details in form ), saying that i cannot remember the dates, that some companies have ceased trading or changed names and also mention that i Have requested SAR details from HMRC and that i can provide this to HO later when i receive it? would this be acceptable?
Can we submit a covering letter online?

please note I do not wish to wait for SAR info to come and then apply as it may actually take upto 6 or 7 weeks in reality.


Please suggest and many thanks in advance!

You need to provide the 10 years history - however, it if you cannot remember all dates and employers then state this in the form section where you can provide further clarification.

10 years minus date of naturalisation application.
HMRC does give 10 years info.

[quote=aman90 post_id=1801231 time=1562632498 user_id=119442]
10 years minus date of naturalisation application.
HMRC does give 10 years info.

They do but the OP does not want to wait the processing time.

HI All,

Thank you for your comments/suggestions. Appreciate it:)

Just to Clarify ( for those who might come across the same doubt in future) HMRC can only provide upto 4 years of employment history over the phone. However if you put in a SAR online, then they will send you the 10 year employment history via email within 28 working days.

Since i do not wish to wait for SAR details to come in. I will be providing all my employment history details of those i can remember with approximate dates. For those i cannot remember, i will mention this on my covering letter with an explanation.


Since i have not completed my application, can someone please clarify the following,
1. if i have an option to submit a covering letter online?
2. If start/ end dates of employment are approximate (not exact) would that be an issue?

Also Alterhase58, you suggested to state it in the form section. Sorry i did not understand. Could you please elaborate on it or give me a simple example ?

If there is ‘More Information’ section in the application you could probably state it there, if not you could write a cover letter scan it and upload it when you upload all your other documents.

Wolfash01 wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 09, 2019 3:03 pm

HI All,

Thank you for your comments/suggestions. Appreciate it:)

Just to Clarify ( for those who might come across the same doubt in future) HMRC can only provide upto 4 years of employment history over the phone. However if you put in a SAR online, then they will send you the 10 year employment history via email within 28 working days.

Since i do not wish to wait for SAR details to come in. I will be providing all my employment history details of those i can remember with approximate dates. For those i cannot remember, i will mention this on my covering letter with an explanation.


Since i have not completed my application, can someone please clarify the following,
1. if i have an option to submit a covering letter online?
2. If start/ end dates of employment are approximate (not exact) would that be an issue?

Also Alterhase58, you suggested to state it in the form section. Sorry i did not understand. Could you please elaborate on it or give me a simple example ?