That’s what it took for me to complete my application for indefinite leave to remain. While it’s still fresh in my mind, I wanted to get this list together so you could see what one successful scenario looks like.
Every individual has their own circumstances. This list of documents is an example of one specific, successful scenario. Your list of documents will look different.
Disclaimer: I am not an immigration advisor. For personal immigration advice, consult an immigration solicitor. If you’re a member of either Unison or the RCN, you can get free immigration advice through them which is exactly what I did.
Getting indefinite leave to remain has been the goal from day 1. And now, after five years of living in the UK, I’m eligible to apply!
For the last 5 years my right to live in the UK has been granted on the basis of my work. Essentially my employer has sponsored me, so I was allowed to stay. Over the years it has had different names: tier 2 visa, skilled worker visa, health and care visa. You could also call it indentured servitude… even if it was enjoyable most of the time. But now I get to leave all that behind me and make the big leap from work visa to ILR and settlement in the UK.
To draw back the curtains of mystery and allow you to peer into the process I’ve compiled a list of all the documents I had to submit. These documents support my claims that I have indeed been here five years, working for my employer, that I have maintained my end of the bargain, essentially, and that I haven’t broken any of the rules they have placed upon me.
You’ll be pleased to know, too, that my application was accepted! So I guess they got all the info they needed.
In 2023, at the time of writing this post, the UKVI (UK Visas and Immigration) partners with the UKVCAS (UK Visa and Citizenship Application Services) to process their applications.
The portal is reasonably straightforward for uploading documents.
After filling out your ILR application through UKVI, you will receive a brief list of documents you’ll need to upload. It isn’t as detailed as I thought it would be, and knowing which documents I needed to submit was one of the more stressful aspects of this application for me.
So, naturally, I sought out reassurance and advice. I spoke to those who have been through the process before me, which is good for seeking reassurance and adopting a more hopeful outlook. But, as with all things legal, if you want advice about your situation it’s best to go to a professional. That’s where my union, the RCN, came in. They provide FREE legal advice for their members so I called them up and set a date.
The UKVCAS does provide some guidelines to help you successfully upload your documents, too, but they are more practical bits of advice about technology and scanning. The bits I found most important from that are:
The upload portal is organized into 2 sections: mandatory documents and optional documents. These are then further divided into categories and I had to decide where best to put my documents. I guess the idea is that it’s a standardized platform, but I was (inevitably) concerned that there were extra categories that didn’t apply to me because I have been on a work visa.
I’ll go through each category and briefly explain my circumstances, then list out the documents I provided.
For this, I just followed the instructions given to me when I applied through UKVI. They provided a consent form so that they could request verification checks for things like bank statements, utility bills, etc. The consent form for me was on page one, and because my partner shares some of those accounts, he had to fill out part 2. Part 3 was not relevant to us, so I didn’t submit it.
The immigration solicitor I spoke to through the RCN suggested I include the confirmation email I received stating that I had passed my Life in the UK exam, so I did. The ILR application already asks for the unique number that is included in the email, so it was a bit redundant, but who am I to go against specialist advice?
This was by far the section with the most documents. I just didn’t want to give them any reason to think that I hadn’t been living in the UK. Plus, for the last 5 years, I’d been saving up all these documents for this very moment. I have lived at 3 different addresses in the UK all under different circumstances. For my first 3 months in the UK I lived in hospital accommodation. I had a lease agreement, but nothing else. The next place I lived in was a rented flat. I had a lease agreement and council tax bills. Now I live in a house that is owned by my partner. I didn’t know how best to support this living situation with documentation, but my RCN immigration solicitor suggested a mortgage statement, most recent mortgage payments, a letter from my partner, and a copy of his passport. So that’s what I did.
I also included the last year’s worth of utility bills. This helped support my claim that I lived at the address. I was going to include my phone bills for the last year, too, but at the last minute I realized my address hadn’t been updated! So I quickly removed those and went with what I had.
I had to submit my most recent bank account statement, and in my document list it did say that they only wanted the most recent one, but my immigration advisor said to send a few to show that I have some financial security. He did caveat that by saying if I was in overdraft, then don’t. So I sent in a few month’s worth of bank statements from all of my UK accounts.
Had no real clue what this one was about.
I didn’t have any life events that were relevant to my application. I considered putting my marriage and divorce info here, but the real reason for including that was for them to confirm my identity, not to support my application for ILR.
Again, nothing relevant for me here.
Some of these documents were on the checklist I received from UKVI, others were suggested to me by the immigration solicitor I consulted through RCN (free for members!). P60s are sort of like a W2 for you Americans out there. They run alongside the financial year which in the UK is from 6 th of April to 5 th of April of the next year. Because 2022/23’s P60 hasn’t been issued yet, I was advised to include my payslips from April ‘22 all the way up to the submission date of my application. I’ve been with the same employer so getting these letters was reasonably straightforward, though it was the bit that took the longest because, well… HR. Need I say more? If I had previous employers, then I would have had to get the same letters from them, too.
Because I have previously been married, I needed to include my marriage license and divorce decree alongside my old passport with my married name and my current passport with my maiden name. (Any other divorcees out there: will the whole ordeal ever well and truly go away?) I also included all the “visas”/BRPs that I have had since moving to the UK: the entry clearance vignette I got before taking that big flight, the BRP I picked up a week or two after arriving, the BRP I got after my first visa extension, and the (disappointing inferior) confirmation email I got instead of a BRP card with my last visa extension.
Again, another one that wasn’t relevant to my application. I have studied, but it is not info that would have supported my application in any way.
The UKVCAS offers a range of extras that you can pay for. The two that I availed myself of were the document checking and the SMS service for a total of £50 extra. After spending nearly £3000 on the application, I figured having someone look over the quality of the files I uploaded and checking that they were in the correct categories. I feel it was worth it. The £2 I spent on the SMS updates weren’t terribly helpful, but it wasn’t much lost.
The only reason you ever should have made it this far in this post is that you too have your sights set on indefinite leave to remain and you’re looking to get as much information as you can either to hoard until the fateful day or to get them together now to send off.
Either way, my best advice would be to stay organized. And if you have any access to immigration advice then it can give you that much more confidence when hitting that submit button.
Every single application will be different because everyone’s circumstances are different. The RCN immigration solicitor suggested including documents that weren’t even mentioned in the checklist I received from the UKVI. As a bonus, it was basically free to me since it was included in my union membership.
It is possible to do it on your own without hiring a solicitor, but many people do so that they can rest assured that a professional is guiding the process. And if you have any questions about your situation, then getting professional advice is the way forward.
Disclaimer: This is not immigration advice – for more information read through the terms of use and privacy policy for using this website.
Rachel is the creator of Anywayward. She is an international nurse, American expat, and travel enthusiast. She spends her time drinking too much coffee and thinking of ways to help other American nurses find their way to the UK.
Hi! Nurse from Texas/ Indiana here! Will hit my 4 year mark in August…How far in advance did you: 1.) Take your Life in the UK Exam? 2.) Submit your ILR application? Thanks! Reply
Hi Tanner! Thanks for your questions! I intended on studying for and taking the Life in the UK exam well in advance, but ended up taking it in November ’22. Likewise I intended on applying for ILR as early as possible, which was early December ’22. But then I went home to see my family and had a few difficulties getting my sponsor letters from HR because their records weren’t entirely up to date. So dozens of emails and a few phone calls later, it was sorted. I got a little nervous about which supporting documents I needed to include so I also arranged an appointment with the RCN immigration advice team. That was reassuring, but did mean I had to wait submit my documents. I submitted my application at the end of January and got an appointment in the last week of February. I paid for the 5 day decision (must be selected and paid for when you submit your application). You can check out my post on the life in the UK test here. Hope that helps! Reply
Hi Rachel, Really nice post and helped me a lot in understanding the ILR process. I have few queries:
(1) Does permanent status of your employment at the company matter during the application of ILR? For e.g. my current contract last till January 2024 but I will be completing 5 years in September 2023. So will my application be rejected because I have only work contract for another 4 months post completing 5 years in UK. (2) The supporting documents can only be submitted online or can I submit the printed hard copies as well?
(3) Did you submit the scanned copies of the 2 BRP cards? I do not have mine as I had to submit the expired ones back to the UKVI as per their rule. Thanks for answering my queries. Regards
Rahul Reply
Hi Rahul. I’m glad the post helped. I can’t give advice on individual cases, for that you’ll need a qualified immigration solicitor/advisor. But I can speak about my own experience. In the documents list provided to me by the UKVI it said the letter from my sponsor needed to state that I was “still required for the employment in question for the foreseeable future”. When submitting the supporting documents, I think the quickest way is to upload scans of all necessary documents at home, including BRPs, before the appointment, that is, if you have access to a scanner. If that’s not possible, you can make a special appointment where you bring all of the hard copies and they scan them there. I don’t remember if this costs extra. I uploaded everything beforehand and brought a few hard copies, but they didn’t want to see anything besides my passport and the appointment QR code. Good luck – and you can always find an immigration solicitor that will give you a consultation even if you don’t use them for the whole process. I did that once and it was £50 for a bit of advice and he then answered lots of questions via email for free later on down the line. Reply
Hi Rachel, Thank you for this outstanding, detailed informative article. I am due to apply for ILR soon, however I am really worried around this area:
“Letter from employer outlining all my absences from the UK and confirming that they were taken with annual leave, days off, or a combination thereof and fitted around my normal working pattern. Plus a few other bits of info.” Is there any chance you can help with what was written in this letter by your employer?
Also, how long was your maximum stay outside of UK in any absence please? Thanks,
G Reply
Hi Gary! I’m glad you found the article helped! I can’t give personal immigration advise, for that you need an immigration adviser, but I can speak about my own experience. With the absences, maybe I was a bit lazy, but I didn’t want to sort through which international trips I took on days off and which I used AL for. As a nurse, we don’t work the typically 9-5, so I may have 4-5 days off and decide to pop over to Paris or something. So to get around the difficulty of picking every trip apart, I basically just said here are the dates that I was out of the country and I was able to be away from work because I either had days off (like a long weekend) or used some AL, or a combination thereof. The longest I spent outside the UK in any one trip was 23 full days. To be eligible for ILR through a skilled worker visa, I had to confirm that my absences were not more than 180 days in any 12-month period. But that’s what my visa requirements are, so you’d have to check based on your visa. This is a useful web page on the UK gov website for that: https://www.gov.uk/indefinite-leave-to-remain
It also has a link with info for finding an immigration adviser if you might find that useful. A consultation can be informative and cheaper than having them do the whole process for you, but both are options. I did a consultation once for a different visa and it cost £50 and he answered multiple questions via email afterwards. Hope that helps and good luck. Reply
Hi Rachel,
Thank you for this detailed information – very helpful! Could you let me know the name of the lawyer/legal service you used for £50? Or what did you search to look for this service. Most ILR checking services I’ve found are £300-500+ so I would be thrilled to find one for less.
Thanks,
Alex Reply
