ILR, ancestry visa and absence

[maccma]

Hi,

I am currently on a UK Ancestry Visa (4yr) set to expire on the
3/3/10. I initially came to the UK for 3 weeks on April the 18th 2006 and
then returned to Australia on the 4th of May 2006 to sort out some things, then came back to the UK to live on May 4th 2007. I have been working continuously here since then (bar the few weeks in which it took to get a job). So I will have been residing in the UK for around 3 years at the end of my Visa. My aim is to apply for ILR but I won't have been residing the full 5 years, even if I apply for a 1 year extension. So what are my options for getting ILR? Should I apply to extend my UK Ancestry Visa? Or should I apply for the 1 yr extension and then try for ILR? My guess is that the initial period out of the country was too long to apply for ILR. Is it worth contacting UKBA or a lawyer perhaps?

Grateful for any help,

Regards,

Campbell

[newperson]

As someone who was in almost exactly in the same position as you, I can guarantee that you threw a massive spanner in the ILR works when you went back to Australia for a year between May 2006 and May 2007.

Unless you were there in Australia doing business and being paid by a UK-based employer (who can attest to that in writing) or were there under extreme extenuating circumstances (think cancer or some other gut-wrenching family tragedy), your ILR clock was reset when you returned to the UK in May 2007. This is because you spent a stretch of more than 90 days out of the UK in one go, and you have exceeded the total number of absence days allowed (180) in your ILR qualifying period. So you need to accumulate five years from your return, meaning you can't apply for probationary citizenship until Spring 2012. Probationary citizenship, by the way, will replace ILR in July 2011.

In the meantime, you can extend your Ancestry Visa at any time within the UK by filling out the form FLR(BID), which you can find on the UKBA website. You don't have to wait until 28 days before the current ancestry visa expires, like you do with settlement applications. You can renew any time. Be sure to include a cover note asking for the extension to be made for the full five years. Who knows what might happen in your personal life over the next few years?

Hope that helps.