ILR non-work related absences

[MarT88]

Hello all,

I've got probably one of the most common questions, yet causing the most confusion as far as I can see - number of days away from the country.

I arrived in the UK back in 2008, but was unable to find a job for about 6 months after arrival. I had an excellent job offer from outside UK, so when my money ran out, I took that job and moved to live in that country for 3 months (with intermittent trips to UK over those 3 months). The job allowed me to kill two birds with one stone - it offered a great experience for my further career growth in UK (which I achieved over the following 4 yrs), yet allowing me to continue looking for a job in UK. The question is, can these 3 months be treated by a CW as breaking my continuous residence in UK and what evidence can I provide to show them it was a simple case of not having enough money to live here? Is it worth me providing them with my bank statements over that period for instance?

Thanks in advance for your responses!

[mulderpf]

There were several answers to this question by the Settlement Ops team on WhatDoTheyKnow.com, all saying the same thing unfortunately:

Tier 1 (General) migrants are not required to be in continuous employment, but must be in the UK seeking work or looking to set up a business, therefore any absence from the UK would need to be related to one of these purposes for being in the UK.

Absences due to personal reasons are not related to work or business, therefore any time spent outside of the UK for personal reasons would break continuity, regardless of whether or not the applicant was still employed in the UK.

If a Tier 1 (General) migrant was outside of the UK for any reason other than to take annual leave, they would need to explain the reason for the absence and how they continued to be economically active (engaged in business and earning an income here) whist outside of the UK.

They are very sticky on this now it seems. Unless you were in the UK either looking for a job, working or on leave from a job, it counts as a break in continuity. Especially since you say that you could not afford the UK during this time, it makes it even more apparent that you were not economically active here (not having enough money to live in the UK would be a really poor excuse to be honest as one of the requirements for the initial visa was to have enough money to support yourself).