FLR(M) Renewal

Hello again!

It's hard to believe that it's time to renew my FLR(M)! It's been nice not to have to think about the visa for the past couple of years until now.

My current BRP was issued on 30 July 2021 and it expires on 24 February 2024. My husband and I are starting to gather everything for the visa and of course a couple of questions have come up.

1) Our longterm goal is for me to get ILR and then citizenship. I've seen a few posts about how timing of when you apply for your FLR(M) renewal can be important for correctly timing ILR. I first arrived in the UK on my fiancé visa on 28 March 2021, but from my understanding, time spent in the UK on a fiancé visa does not count towards IRL. So if my BRP for my first FLR(M) visa started on 30 July 2021 and it expires 24 February 2024, when would be the best date to apply keeping IRL in mind? Is waiting until after January 30th correct?

2) For proof of cohabitation, both of our names are listed in the address section of our electric bills and our council tax bills. For our water bill, only my husband is listed in the address section as the company can only list one person there, but then both of our names are listed as account holders on the bill. We used the water bill for transitioning from fiancé visa to FLR(M) because we were limited with options since I had only lived in the UK for 3 months at that point, and it worked. Do you think we could still use the water bill for the FLR(M) renewal?

Thank you!

Hi all,

Just bumping this thread up again as we are working on the renewal and I was to get your input on the two questions below.

Thank you!

1) Our longterm goal is for me to get ILR and then citizenship. I've seen a few posts about how timing of when you apply for your FLR(M) renewal can be important for correctly timing ILR. I first arrived in the UK on my fiancé visa on 28 March 2021, but from my understanding, time spent in the UK on a fiancé visa does not count towards IRL. So if my BRP for my first FLR(M) visa started on 30 July 2021 and it expires 24 February 2024, when would be the best date to apply keeping IRL in mind? Is waiting until after January 30th correct?

You can apply for your second FLR(M) up to 28 days before you reach 30 months on the first FLR(M). If your BRP started on 30th July 2021, then you reached 30 months on 30th January 2024.

Which means you are eligible to apply any time between 2nd January 2024 and 24th February 2024.

2) For proof of cohabitation, both of our names are listed in the address section of our electric bills and our council tax bills. For our water bill, only my husband is listed in the address section as the company can only list one person there, but then both of our names are listed as account holders on the bill. We used the water bill for transitioning from fiancé visa to FLR(M) because we were limited with options since I had only lived in the UK for 3 months at that point, and it worked. Do you think we could still use the water bill for the FLR(M) renewal?

Yes, you can use the water bill as both your names are listed on it (if it worked for your first FLR(M), then it will work for your second FLR(M)).

Hi @ksand24 , thank you!

Also, I just want to confirm that this is right: all of my husband's bank statements were sent to him as hard copies in the mail. These do not need to be stamped by the bank as that's only for downloaded statements, correct?

Lastly, I wanted to check on our proof for cohabitation. It seems like a lot of people start their proof of cohabitation the month before the visa expires and they submit their application and then space it out every four months after that. If we followed that schedule that would be Jan 2024, Sep 2023, May 2023, Jan 2023, Sep 2022, May 2022. However, the mail that we have just doesn't fit into that schedule. How does the below schedule and proof look?

Jan 2024 - joint EDF electric bill
Nov 2023 - joint EDF letter
Jul 2023 - joint EDF electric bill
Mar 2023 - joint Thames water bill
Nov 2022 - NHS letter for me, Virgin internet bill for husband
Jul 2022 - joint EDF electric bill
Mar 2022 - joint Council Tax bill

Thank you so much!

Hi again,

I'm just bumping this up again as we'd like to submit our application at the end of the week. Could someone please review my question and list of documents below?

Thank you so much!