Um, they did do a home check on me. But, I know of no one else who has ever had this done.
After I moved to Worthing on my spouse visa, about 2 or 3 months later, a UKBA employee did come to our home, unannounced, and had a look around, and asked a few basic questions.
It was fine. Everything was fine. We had nothing to hide.
But, yeah, that happened.
I did ask her why she had come, and she told me she did not have access to that information. She said she was just doing a home visit and then filing a report. She was very nice. She had a little check list that she went through, and she got a tour of the house and the garden, and she met my husband, and my cats... My husband came home from work fro lunch and about died when I introduced him to the UKBA employee!
Now, I have reason to believe that visit happened because I was added to a facebook page, for expat American Women in the UK, and I became involved on a chat, on their board. It was about immigrants, and some nutter on this American expat facebook women's page actually reported my marriage to them as a sham marriage... basically because I said I would never report an illegal living in the UK, and she had some very strong feelings about my views on that topic... and so basically she said she was going to report me to a friend of hers who worked for the UKBA, although she never said what my 'crime' was, other than having a view of something that was not in line with hers... but that is a whole other story.
But, yeah, we had a UKBA home check! That was over a year ago, and it has not reoccured.
The good thing was that I was able to ask the UKBA employee a tonne of questions! Like, how do I get my NI#, do I need to carry my passport, how often can we leave the country without it becoming an issue for ILR, and the like! So, it ended up being a very helpful and informative visit!!!
But, I mean, check or no check, if you have nothing to hide, why even worry?!
