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Firstly, I want to thank anyone who can assist with my query. I understand you must get multiple questions that are similar/the same, I have had a look through the forum but can't find anything similar to my own situation.

I arrived in Nov 2010 on Tier 5, married my husband in 2012 and was granted my first flr(m) early March 2013, by second flr(m) was granted 8/8/15 and is due to expire 26/2/18.

I understand I need to do the life in UK test, and that I can apply 28 days before the 26/2/18. My own income is more than the £18.6k threshold, now, but in the last flr(m) period I have been employed, temping and now self-employed. I am confused about how to utilise this information on the form, is the £18.6k for me only or is it as a couple, and if so do I, therefore, rely on my husband's income as he has had the same job for the entire period thus being clearer to record on the form.

From what I can see you have to choose if you want to rely on income from employment or self-employment which I have had a combination of.

Sorry, if this doesn't make sense. Previously I've had the same job and it was fairly straight forward for me to say I earned enough etc.

Thank you in advance.

You can use EITHER your income OR your husbands income. If he is a PAYE salaried employee and meets the required amount, simply to use his income as you need more evidence for your self employment.

Hi there,

I just wanted to share my recent experience with set(m) ilr application at the Belfast Premium Service centre, in case it helps anyone out there going through something similar.

Firstly, I can't recommend the Belfast office enough, everyone was very friendly and professional.

I spent a lot of time organising everything needed and more for our application and had two folders worth of information and copies of all of it, as I'd read many times in this forum to make sure everything is copied to save them time. I even worried about the little things like labels being straight and other things which seem silly now!

The first thing we were told was there was too much information. The lady kindly informed me to quickly strip out only the bare minimum of information needed for the application and that we hadn't needed to copy anything.

We had to rely on my husband's income under category F for the financial requirement as all my income was null and void given I have not been self-employed for a full financial year (only since September) and was on 21k a year before that as an employee. My husband is a director and employee of his own company, but it is one of the specified limited companies so he needed to provide more information as per the appendix notes. All of this was no issue as he earns more than enough.

He changed from Limited Liability Partnership to Ltd company in October 2015 and as such his CT600's ran from october 15- november 16 and then from december 16 - march 17, to match it all up with the proper financial years as per HMRC rules.

He provided the CT600 for both periods. As there were two CT600's, despite showing the tax return for the financial year 16/17 it was rejected on the grounds of needing to be 1 document for the full financial year.

We were then told our application was set to be rejected as we had no way to rely on any income, despite having all the information showing we both earn more than enough. Unless you can match their criteria it is not acceptable.

Thankfully, due to my over-preparedness, I included information about our savings, which were enough to rely on. We had to then change the form there and then to say we were relying on cash savings and all was ok.

I would just advise anyone in the early stages of preparation to think about these things. If I had thought about it I would maybe not have changed to self-employed when I did. There was no way my husband could do anything different as the HMRC is the HMRC. It's just worth thinking about beforehand if you or your spouse is in a similar situation as we were, I'd hate anyone to get to their appointment and find out the hard way like we did.