Advice on our relocation plan (please)

Surinder Singh applies for self employment as well.

Consider staying in Spain longer (aim for a year)

I am really interested in where you are getting this this one year time frame from.

I am really interested in where you are getting this this one year time frame from.

I'll try to dig it up.  It was when they made the change and tightened the Surrinder Singh route, it was suggested that the original 3-6 month requirement be extended to 12 months.  If I understand it correctly, it's not a hard and fast rule as there are no specific time requirements for SS.  The case worker evaluates if the applicant's sponsor had moved their life to the 3rd country, versus just setting up camp for a bit of time (getting a local drivers license, registering your vehicle locally, setting up a local bank account, getting involved in the community, putting your kids in local schools, etc.).

if the applicant's sponsor had moved their life to the 3rd country, versus just setting up camp for a bit of time (getting a local drivers license, registering your vehicle locally, setting up a local bank account, getting involved in the community, putting your kids in local schools, etc.).

This is correct as best I can tell......making the Member State the "centre of life". I am just not finding the mention of 12 months.

One obstacle that I see to your plan is that you plan on looking for a job in the UK from Spain.  Unless you have a highly specialised job, employers and recruitment agents won't waste time with someone who is not physically in the country.  There's a lot of competition for each role and something like "I live in Spain till I can sort the visa but I promise I'll fly in for an interview " will put you firmly at the bottom of the list.


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Thanks Jimbo. My wife is (in her words 'unfortunately' a social worker, which is still a pretty high demand job in London. The last time I checked it was still on that list of job titles were shortages exist.

The other thing is we're not really going to ask employers to make exceptions as far as interviews etc go. If we get an interview, and it looks promising, we'll go to it and take it from there. Admittedly the answer to "when can you start" will be something like 4 weeks, depending on the waiting time for either of the possible visas (paying for priority processing probably). That may be a bit more than usual, but hopefully not an impossible request. At worst, one scenario might mean that I would have to start my job while the wife waited in America for her visa. 

Plus, based on some of the helpful advice on this thread from yesterday, we're now more open to going back to our original plan which is to stay in London for a week or two as needed during the search rather than flit back and forth from Spain as much as we maybe hoped.   

That's the plan anyway