Citizenship Application - More than 90 days out of country in last 12 months!

Hello,

My wife's about to apply for ILR and then citizenship on the 5 year spouse/family visa. I'm a UK citizen.

Is there any flexibility on the 90 days in the last 12 months at time of applying for citizenship? The wording says 'should' which gave me a little hope.

On the UK gov website it's says - "You should not have: spent more than 450 days outside the UK during the 5 years before your application. Or spent more than 90 days outside the UK in the last 12 months."

Unfortunately we went on an extended holiday and will have been out of the country about 110 days in the last 12 months when she comes to apply.

Thanks

Rob

Is there any flexibility on the 90 days in the last 12 months at time of applying for citizenship? The wording says 'should' which gave me a little hope.

On the UK gov website it's says - "You should not have: spent more than 450 days outside the UK during the 5 years before your application. Or spent more than 90 days outside the UK in the last 12 months."

There's no deadline for applying for citizenship... you just apply whenever you meet all the requirements. That could be the day you receive ILR (if you meet the requirements now), or it might be in 2 years' time (if you have to wait to meet the requirements).

The 12-month period is rolling, so all she has to do is not apply for UK citizenship until she is back below 90 days out of the country in the last 12 months.

What dates were you out of the country?

Also, for people married to UK citizens, the residency period is only 3 years, not 5 years.

The residency requirements for your wife will be:
- she must hold ILR
- she must have been inside the UK exactly 3 years prior to the date she submits the citizenship application
- she must not have been outside the UK for more than 270 days in the last 3 years, with no more than 90 of those days being in the last 12 months before applying (you don't count the day you left or the day you returned to the UK.

There is a little bit of leniency with the days outside the UK. They will normally disregard up to 300 days in the last 3 years, and up to 100 days in the last 12 months (see here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/form-an-guidance/form-an-guidance-accessible#bookmark11)

Hi,

That's really helpful, a bit gutted she could have got citizenship after 3 years.
It looks like she meets the criteria for consideration of being out of the country more than 90 days which is very positive.
We were planning to be out of the UK more than 90 days quite regularly so wanted to get the citizenship done.
Do you know if she will need ILR or can she skip this as the spouse of a UK citizen?

Cheers

Hi,

That's really helpful, a bit gutted she could have got citizenship after 3 years.
It looks like she meets the criteria for consideration of being out of the country more than 90 days which is very positive.
We were planning to be out of the UK more than 90 days quite regularly so wanted to get the citizenship done.
Do you know if she will need ILR or can she skip this as the spouse of a UK citizen?

Cheers

As I mentioned above, she must hold ILR before she can apply for citizenship.

So she could not have got citizenship after 3 years because it takes 5 years to qualify for ILR.

Once she has ILR you will just need to time her citizenship application so that she has not been outside the UK for more than 90 days in the previous 12 months (or a max of 100 days as long as you have a good explanation for it).


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It's odd but it's the way it is because it used to take 3 years to ILR but they changed it to 5 under the immigration rules in 2012. Citizenship has it's own rules of which one is that ILR must be obtained first,