Settlement to Join Parent(s) visa of a child born abroad (to parents both with ILR / settled in UK) expired. Next steps

[KailashKM]

Our son born in India to parents both with ILR in UK was granted Settlement to Join Parent(s) in Oct 2022. We travelled abroad recently (Oct 2025) and while returning we are not able to generate a share code for him, as the eVisa says his leave expired on 31 Dec 2024. As a result he is stuck abroad as of now.

We are both settled in UK with ILR, I received mine in 2018 and my wife in 2020. Our son was born in India in 2021. We applied for him to a Settlement visa from India and his visa was approved in Oct 2022 and travelled to UK soon after.

Our immigration solicitor advised during the time of the application that as we parents both have ILR status, our son’s will have Settled or Indefinite Leave like us.

Reading the letter that was issued during the visa approval, it says he has been granted Leave to enter as Settlement to Join Parent(s) in UK from Oct 2022 to 31 Dec 2024. His BRP card said ‘PBS Dependant’ with validity until 31 Dec 2024.

Our assumption was that as we applied under Settlement Visa, and the ‘Settlement’ work on the letter meant he would have Indefinite Leave and the 31 Dec 2024 was purely the expiry data of his BRP. Our ILR BRP cards also said they expired on 31 Dec 2024 and that was when the UK was transitioning to the eVisa system and we assumed 31 Dec 2024 indicated that and did not think that was an expiry data of the Visa granted to our son.

Our son has been living with us in the UK since Oct 2022 and have travelled abroad on short holidays couple times (in 2023 and 2024) along with us without any issues. However, on his recent trip to India and on return we were not able to generate eVisa as the portal said ‘Dependant expired’ on 31 Dec 2024. As we were not able to generate the share code for our son, we were not able to make the trip as planned.

Speaking to our Immigration solicitor, who advised his initial application, says there has been an error in the UKVI part and as he was born to parents who both had ILR status at the time of his birth, he must be eligible to Indefinite Leave and should have similar status to us.

We have submitted the eVisa correction request to UKVI using their online form, they have responded that it has now been referred to a case worker and will get back to us once they have confirmation of the correct status. It has been about 3 working days now and we assume they will provide an update within 5 working days.

Speaking to UKVI in the meantime via their telephone service, they are saying that he has been granted a Visa that had an expiry date on 31 Dec 2024 and we should have extended his Visa before this date, which we have clearly misunderstood. They have also suggested that the only option available to us now is to make a Fresh application for our son and explaining our situation and our misunderstanding. They have also suggested his ILR clock might get reset.

We are genuinely concerned now as he has not been able to return to UK as planned. If 31 Dec 2024 was the expiry date, which we may have misunderstood, he has lived in the UK beyond the time of this expiry date and the impact of that on future applications.

Our questions are,
1. What is the correct visa type that will be granted to child born abroad to parents both with ILR?
2. Has he been granted under a wrong category due to an administrative error? If that is the case will UKVI be able to correct this if we write to them explaining the situation?
3. What is the fastest visa route available for him to travel now? Is making a fresh application and explaining our misunderstanding the route forward?