Important changes regarding ILR under the 10-year long residence in the country - violation of the basic principle of law

Unexpected news of 08 July 2024 - the Home Office guidance on the long residence was updated to include the new additional requirement about calculation of absences.

This new requirement is as follows:

- any part of a 10-year qualifying period before 11 April 2024 must not have total absences of more than 548 days

We would like to remind that on 11 April this year, the Home Office guidance was already amended, whereby new rules on calculation of absences were introduced and the 548-day limit was abolished.

Now with the latest amendments of 08 July, the 548-day limit has been essentially reinstated.

And therefore the current rules on calculation of absences are as follows (there are three rules in total):

- any single absences started before 11 April 2024 must be no longer than 184 days

- any part of a 10-year qualifying period before 11 April 2024 must not have total absences of more than 548 days

- from 11 April 2024 the applicant must not have been outside the UK for more than 180 days in any 12-month period.

Nevertheless, it is also fair to mention that during the period from 11 April to 08 July many ILR long residence applications have been submitted to the Home Office but in practice the Home Office mostly have not taken decisions on them – preferring to delay consideration while policy changes were considered and implemented. At the same time, we cannot state that positive decisions on ILR long residence were not made during this period, since formally speaking, the requirement for a 548-day limit was not applied during the above period and was temporarily abolished.

At the same time, we urge potential ILR long residence applicants not to become too worried or sad since the consecutive amendment of the ILR long residence route might well lead in the future to a number of legal challenges in the court due to being irrational, inadequate, too abruptly changed and unfavorable. 

Any simplification of the law implies that the changes must also apply to the past period.

According to the current rules, as stated by the Home Office, until April 11, the total absence for 10 years is 548 days, according to the new rules, a total of 1800 days.

The period leading to ILR long residence remains the same - 10 years. Accordingly, we expect a large number of claims against the Home Office because the basic principle of law has been violated - liberalization of the law should also apply to the past period.