To clarify I am a UK citizen, born in the UK to UK born citizens.
I haven't used my passport because it's expired (22 July 2020). However, would this be ok to submit as proof of my citizenship (it would make things simpler)?
No, you must have a VALID passport in order to use it for the visa. I would advise renewing it ASAP, and hopefully you will get it back in time to apply for ILR (as you have until 5th Feb to apply online for ILR).
I renewed my UK passport in October and it took a total of 8 days from applying online to receiving the new passport:
Sunday - applied online
Monday - mailed my old passport
Friday - email confirming receipt of old passport
Friday, 30 minutes later - passport approval email
Tuesday - new passport arrived (I paid the extra £5 for courier delivery)
In order to prove UK citizenship, you need either:
1) a current, VALID UK passport
OR
2)
- birth certificate
AND
- evidence of 3 years ordinary residence in the UK
AND
If born after 1st Jan 1983:
- evidence of parents' immigration status (i.e. UK birth certificates)
AND
- evidence of whether or not they were married at the time you were born
So, if you can get a new passport in time, it's much easier to use that than to have to provide all the other documents to prove the same thing as just the passport.
Alternatively, I can submit my mum and dad's birth certificates and their wedding certificate - however, my dad has told me he only has "the small version, not the long version" of his birth certificate (not sure what this means... perhaps it's my age... but perhaps this this would not matter with my mum being a British citizen when I was born in the UK...)
There are 2 versions of a birth certificate issued:
- one is the long-form, which is A4 size and has all the details of your birth and your parents information on it
- one is the short-form, which is about A5 size and only has basic details on it
I was born in 1983 and I believe I have both versions of my birth certificate.
In terms of the "one document proving that you have been ordinarily resident in the UK for the last 3 years", would this just be an item of correspondence like those used to prove cohabitation (e.g. a bank statement from 3 years ago?). Does this need to be addressed at any particular time in the last 3 years? e.g. I could use a bank statement from 18 Jan 2019
I believe you need to show residence covering all of the last 3 years - so that may require multiple documents showing you were living in the UK in each of the 3 years (i.e. utility or council tax bills from each year).
Just to clarify, we believed we were using correspondence from 4 different sources; statements from Bank A, statements from Bank B, credit card from Bank C, credit card from Bank D. Is this not the correct interpretation of "sources"?
Source here means 'type of company'... so all your bank statements fall under one type of company = a financial institution
For example:
Source 1: bank statements from Natwest and Nationwide (source = financial institution)
Source 2: credit card bills from Mastercard and VISA (source = credit card companies)
Source 3: council tax bill (source = local council)
Source 4: electricity bills from NPower and British Gas (source = electricity companies)
Source 5: phone bills from EE and Three (source = mobile phone companies)
We do have council tax bills but sods law means that they fall on dates which make providing evenly spaced documentation tricky...
You can always adjust your months slightly if you have better correspondence from other months. In fact, if your most recent correspondence item is from December, you really want to have the 2.5 years end in December, so it starts in June 2019:
June 2019
November 2019
April 2020
September 2020
February 2021
July 2021
December 2021
We're almost certainly not going to have a piece of correspondence issued in January 2022 because our statements come in later but we do have something from 18 Dec which would fall within one month of applying even though it's from the last calendar month
You can use the one from December if you like, as it's the end of the period and you may not have anything from Jan yet.
Alternatively, you could wait until the end of January or the first week of February to apply instead so that you have January correspondence.
You don't HAVE to apply next week if it's not convenient for your evidence.
... rather than working on the basis of calendar months we separated the last 2.5 years into 30 chunks from our planned day to apply (9 Jan). I've shown this below in the table below which then shows the spacing as 6 months, 6 months, 5 months, 6 months, 6 months. Are these not evenly spaced?
Evenly-spaced means 1 document every 5 months. Given that 30 months / 6 = 5 months, using documents that are spaced 6 months apart do not meet the definition of evenly-spaced over 30 months.
So, the way you work it out is that you count back 2.5 years from the most recent document you have (in your case, Dec 2020) to get to June 2019, then you count every 5 months from there and you need something from every 5th month (June 2019, Nov 2019, Apr 2020, Sep 2020, Feb 2021, July 2021, Dec 2021).
If it's absolutely the case that there is no possible way for you to provide something from each of those months, you can use slightly different months, but you are required to provide an explanation in writing for why they are from the wrong months (i.e. if you have to provide something from Mar 2021 instead of Feb 2021).
It's quite unusual to use only bank and credit card statements. Most people use mainly utility bills and council tax statements, and then fill in any gaps with monthly bank statements (which we recommend are set to monthly paper statements so that you have them available for every single month).
Do you not have any other mail you can use?
Acceptable documents are:
- tenancy agreements
- mortgage statements
- council tax statements
- letters from the council
- water bills
- electricity bills
- gas bills
- phone bills
- TV/broadband bills
- TV licence renewal
- bank statements
- insurance statements
- credit card bills
- letters from the NHS
- letters from DVLA
- letters from HMRC or DWP
- in theory you can also use payslips if they have your address on, though they are not actually on the list of acceptable documents
So, what you really want to do is gather ALL the mail you have from the last 2.5 years, divide the items into each month, and then work out what you can use for each of the required months.
