I am writing on behalf of my partner who is applying for a permanent residence as a Polish citizen. We have discovered that despite working for goverment-owned institutions he was never asked to register with WRS and he had no idea he had to (misinformation on their part
). When he stopped working for them, WRS was no longer in place. Below are the dates of his employment in and out of UK:
UK: 01/10/2005 - 30/09/2009 - employed as PhD student (WRS not required?)
UK: 01/10/2009 - 31/12/2010 - employed by same institution (job title change, can we assume that WRS not required as he had been with them for the previous 12 mths or is it not continued employment?)
UK, different employer: 17/01/2011 - 16/01/2015 - employed as post-doc (WRS not required since 04/ 2011).
out of UK - 18/02/2015 - 31/03/2015 – volunteer on behalf of the UK goverment (insured)
out of UK - 15/06/2015 - 28/02/2017
UK - 18/04/2017 - until now
We were going to rely on the 5 year period starting my partner's PhD (01/10/2005) on the assumption that he was not required to register with WRS:
- as his status was student in the years 2005-09
- in 2009-10 he was continuing his employment with the same institution (exemption for "those who were in continuous employment for a period of at least 12 months falling partly or wholly on or after 30 April 2004).
Is that a correct interpretation? Or are we missing the point completely and the exemption is only for those employed prior to accession period i.e. before 30 April and change in his contract 2009 required him to register? Unfortunately, without the WRS we can't use a different 5 years period. I would be most grateful for any advice.
Kind regards,
Agata