SET (AF) questions for indefinite leave to remain

I am hoping to get some advice about whether I have the correct documents together for my ILR application. I was granted a 5 year spouse visa (5 years instead of the usual 3 because my spouse is in the armed forces) in 2016 and have submitted my ILR application. My biometrics appointment is the 6th of Feb so I am scrambling to get this all together. I will try to keep these questions as straight to the point as possible!

1) I accidentally put the wrong date on the application for the question 'when did you marry or enter into a civil partnership with your partner'. Complete honest mistake, but I guess it's too late to change it. The correct date is on my marriage certificate which I will provide to them. Do I need to majorly worry about this, is there a way to change it, and/or should I include a signed letter from my spouse and I explaining this error and that the correct date is on the marriage certificate?

2) No matter how many times I read the instruction below, I am not sure if I am interpreting it correctly.

' Items of correspondence addressed to (me) and (my spouse) at the same address as evidence you have been living together since your last grant of leave in this category, or from the date you first started living together, covering the last 2 years'

The items of correspondence I have gathered are:
1. Water bill addressed to both of us from 2021
2. Water bill addressed to both of us from 2020
3. Council tax bill addressed to both of us from 2020
4. Mortgage statement addressed to both of us from 2020
5. Home insurance policy statement addressed to both of us from 2020
6. Pension statement addressed to myself and personal bank statement addressed to my spouse from 2019
7. HMRC letter addressed to myself and electric bill addressed to my spouse from 2018

Does this satisfy the requirement? I can't find anything addressed to my spouse at our address from 2016 or 2017. Does it matter if the letters don't go that far back (i.e. 'since my last grant of leave')? Or does it mean I should in fact only be including things from the most recent 2 years? I can probably find other documents addressed to us more recently, but I have nothing from 2016-2017.

3) I keep reading different advice about whether downloaded PDF bank statements are fine to use or whether they have to be stamped by the bank or accompanied by a letter. Are PDF statements fine?

4) I have a letter from my employer confirming my employment, gross annual salary, and type of employment contract. My HR department didn't follow completely what I asked which was copied and pasted from the UKVI service instructions.

It says ' Letter from your employer(s) confirming employment, gross annual salary, annual salary after tax and National Insurance contributions, length of employment and type of employment (permanent, fixed-term, contract or agency). '.

She didn't write my salary after tax - do I have to bother them for another letter or will they just get this info from my payslips?

5) Finally, is it fine to use the council tax statement and mortgage statement both as proof of correspondence and as proof of the living costs asked for elsewhere?

Thank you in advance for any help you can offer - this process is long and exhausting!
 

I am hoping to get some advice about whether I have the correct documents together for my ILR application. I was granted a 5 year spouse visa (5 years instead of the usual 3 because my spouse is in the armed forces) in 2016 and have submitted my ILR application. My biometrics appointment is the 6th of Feb so I am scrambling to get this all together. I will try to keep these questions as straight to the point as possible!

Ah, you've left this all rather late, I'm afraid. All your documents should have been in order before you submitted the ILR application, as that is your official application date and the documents need to meet all the requirements on that date.

Hopefully you will have enough time now to get everything in order before 6th Feb.

1) I accidentally put the wrong date on the application for the question 'when did you marry or enter into a civil partnership with your partner'. Complete honest mistake, but I guess it's too late to change it. The correct date is on my marriage certificate which I will provide to them. Do I need to majorly worry about this, is there a way to change it, and/or should I include a signed letter from my spouse and I explaining this error and that the correct date is on the marriage certificate?

You won't be able to change it on the application itself as it has already been submitted, but instead, you just need to write a cover letter explaining the mistake.

2) No matter how many times I read the instruction below, I am not sure if I am interpreting it correctly.

' Items of correspondence addressed to (me) and (my spouse) at the same address as evidence you have been living together since your last grant of leave in this category, or from the date you first started living together, covering the last 2 years'

The items of correspondence I have gathered are:
1. Water bill addressed to both of us from 2021
2. Water bill addressed to both of us from 2020
3. Council tax bill addressed to both of us from 2020
4. Mortgage statement addressed to both of us from 2020
5. Home insurance policy statement addressed to both of us from 2020
6. Pension statement addressed to myself and personal bank statement addressed to my spouse from 2019
7. HMRC letter addressed to myself and electric bill addressed to my spouse from 2018

Does this satisfy the requirement? I can't find anything addressed to my spouse at our address from 2016 or 2017. Does it matter if the letters don't go that far back (i.e. 'since my last grant of leave')? Or does it mean I should in fact only be including things from the most recent 2 years? I can probably find other documents addressed to us more recently, but I have nothing from 2016-2017.

As you are on a 5-year Armed Forces spousal visa, I've always thought you needed to cover the entire 5 years, but reading it again maybe they only need the last 2 years.

So, I thought you would need 1 document in each name, dated every 10 months from Jan 2016 to Jan 2021, from at least 3 different official sources. Which would be:
January 2016
November 2016
September 2017
July 2018
May 2019
March 2020
January 2021

But if it is only the last 2 years, then you just need to cover Jan 2019 to Jan 2021, with the documents dated every 4 months.
So you would need 1 document in each name from each of the following months:
January 2019
May 2019
Sept 2019
January 2020
May 2020
Sept 2020
January 2021

If you cannot provide all the required documents or they are not evenly-spaced every 4 months, you will need to write an explanation for why not.

3) I keep reading different advice about whether downloaded PDF bank statements are fine to use or whether they have to be stamped by the bank or accompanied by a letter. Are PDF statements fine?

No, PDF statement MUST either be stamped by the bank on EVERY page or accompanied by a letter from the bank. The most recent bank statement must be dated no more than 28 days before the date you applied online.

4) I have a letter from my employer confirming my employment, gross annual salary, and type of employment contract. My HR department didn't follow completely what I asked which was copied and pasted from the UKVI service instructions.

It says ' Letter from your employer(s) confirming employment, gross annual salary, annual salary after tax and National Insurance contributions, length of employment and type of employment (permanent, fixed-term, contract or agency). '.

She didn't write my salary after tax - do I have to bother them for another letter or will they just get this info from my payslips?

They do not actually need to include the salary AFTER tax, as only the gross salary is considered for the visa.

The requirements for the letter are:
i) Current employment and gross annual salary
ii) length of employment
iii) length of time earning current salary
iv) type of employment

5) Finally, is it fine to use the council tax statement and mortgage statement both as proof of correspondence and as proof of the living costs asked for elsewhere?

Yes, that's fine.

Both the accommodation documents and correspondence documents are uploaded to the same section on the UKVCAS website anyway: Residence in the UK

Thanks so much for your help. I submitted the application as early as I could - it said no more earlier than 28 days before you entered the country which was Feb 14th 2016 for me and no later than when your BRP expires which is Feb 5th 2021 for me. So I submitted as early as I could on the 17th of January, but still doesn't leave me much time I suppose.

I will get out statements from the bank in person then and hopefully they don't make it difficult for us.

I am still not sure if I have the correspondence things right. I will probably need to go back and change this as best we can. Can you point to me where there is guidance about what sources it needs to be from and that they need to be spaced 4 months apart? I will probably have to include in my cover letter why we don't have that. I have electricity bills addressed to both of us, but the company of course got my name wrong on the bill, so I didn't want to use those. For the 6 items (or 12 if addressed individually), is it fine as long as there are 3 different sources spread among those?

Again, the sentence still doesn't make complete sense to me about whether it is supposed to just be the last 2 years or start from 2016 and include the last 2 years. I am just going to do the last 2 years I think as that is easier for us and it seems like it could be interpreted either way...

Thanks again, hopefully we'll get this right!

Thanks so much for your help. I submitted the application as early as I could - it said no more earlier than 28 days before you entered the country which was Feb 14th 2016 for me and no later than when your BRP expires which is Feb 5th 2021 for me. So I submitted as early as I could on the 17th of January, but still doesn't leave me much time I suppose.

She means that you should have got your documents in order before submitting your application. Hitting submit should be the last thing you do after you have all of your evidence in your hands.

Yes, point taken. I have not been as organized as I should have been. I started a folder back in 2016 to collect documents for this purpose and thought I did a better job of it than I have now the time is here.!

Can anyone point out to me where the guidance regarding the spread of correspondence documents and that they should be 4 months apart and from at least 3 different legitimate sources is for SET (AF) ILR? I cannot find a long 'guidance' document online anywhere like there was when I applied for the spouse visa over 5 years ago. The only guidance I have is the list of documents generated at the end of the application and it doesn't specify how many months apart the correspondence needs to be or anything. Are people just extrapolating from guidance on the FLR applications or something?

Can anyone point out to me where the guidance regarding the spread of correspondence documents and that they should be 4 months apart and from at least 3 different legitimate sources is for SET (AF) ILR? I cannot find a long 'guidance' document online anywhere like there was when I applied for the spouse visa over 5 years ago. The only guidance I have is the list of documents generated at the end of the application and it doesn't specify how many months apart the correspondence needs to be or anything. Are people just extrapolating from guidance on the FLR applications or something?

Yes, since not many people apply using SET(AF), we're not too sure what time period you need to cover for the documents.

For normal FLR and ILR applications where your spousal/FLR(M) visas are only valid for 2.5 years each, the requirements are:

FLR(M):
- 6 documents in each name, evenly spaced over the time you've lived together, up to a maximum of 2 years... so 6 documents evenly spaced over 24 months means 1 document every 4 months

ILR:
- 6 documents in each name, evenly spaced over the time since your last grant of leave was issued, which will be 2.5 years... so 6 documents evenly spaced over 30 months means 1 document every 5 months

However, for ILR using SET(AF), your last grant of leave was 5 years ago, not 2.5 years ago... so it really depends on how the requirement is phrased on the document list the online application gives you as to what period of time your documents must cover.

If it says 'since your last grant of leave' only, then you would need to cover the whole 5 years. So, 6 documents spread evenly over 60 months, means 1 document every 10 months.

However, if it says 'up to a maximum of 2 years', then you would use the spacing normally required for FLR(M) applications: 6 documents spread evenly over 24 months = 1 every 4 months.