2 Residence Cards (EU & FLR) received - what to do?

[Nemmy]

Hi all, we're in a bit of an interesting situation here and wonder if anyone can advise.

In July we applied for my spouses EU Residence Card.

For personal reasons we recently decided to apply for FLR, which we did via Premium Appointment and were successful. We received our FLR residence card (valid from 20 Nov) mid last week and then cancelled the EU residence card application online.
We received an email this Monday saying our documents were being returned.

Well, today my spouse received the EU residence card (valid from 27 Nov)!

So now we have 2 - FLR card and EU card.

What do we do? I assume one needs to be cancelled. We would rather keep the UK FLR one due to uncertainty over Brexit.

Does anyone have any advice what we should do or who we should contact???

Many thanks in advance.

[seagul]

It's an error. You haven't mentioned the nationalities of applicant & sponsor. And whether anyone has got UK permanent residence? Be remembered that partner of EU national gets EU residence card instead FLR M.

[Nemmy]

Hello Seagul, thanks for the reply.
I am British and my wife is non-EU.
We arrived back in the UK in April from living in Germany using EEA FP (SS route).

We are allowed to apply for FLR so we did but did not expect the EU card to arrive after I cancelled the application.

[seagul]

Yes if you are British and returning uk after living in eu state then can be eligible for surinder Singh route. But if you haven't applied for that then it's an error to receive that. So better to update HO with their error to avoid any complications in future.

[Nemmy]

Hi again Seagul, I think you misunderstand.

We did apply for EU Residence Card in July, but after 4 months we decided to apply for FLR for personal reasons and then we cancelled the EU residence card application because we got FLR approved.

However, even after we cancelled the EU card application after we received FLR residence permit, they still processed the EU application and sent us the card.

[seagul]

In my guess you may meet requirements for both and I have also heard somewhere that both may be valid until it's expiry. Because many people (non-eu national) holding uk rules based visa when got residence permit under EU route then both remain valid until it's expiry. So if such rule still active & possible then preferably you keep both.

[Nemmy]

Thanks for the advice, Seagul.
I am surprised that it may be valid to hold 2 residence permits, it seems strange to me but if it is ok to hold 2 then we will keep them both.