FLR(M) Application - Questions

Hi all,

My wife's spousal visa for is up for renewal soon. We were quite lucky first time around with our turnaround time of just 3 weeks. Looks like the current processing times are around 3 months.

Based on that, we want to submit the application at around 06-April-2021 and her application should be relatively straightforward (we hope). To sum up the current situation:

- My wife (USC) and myself (UKC) filing for her FLR(M)
- Wife entered the UK on 05-October-2018
- Current BRP was issued on 03-Sep-2018 and it is is valid until 03-June-2021
- Wife is employed, full time and has been with her employer for 1 year and 10 months and she meets the income requirements so we will be using her salary only to cover the financial requirements

In terms of gathering the paperwork, I have drafted a list of the following from reading other threads. Highlighted the bits that we need some guidance on

Applicant
- Passport photocopy
- Scan of current BRP
-Signed online applications (https://visas-immigration.service.gov.uk/product/family-routes?_ga=2.69780816.1305613072.1614534915-145522022.1614534915 - Is this the correct link for the online application)
- Partner's UK passport photocopy

Financial Requirements
- 6 full month's of pay slips dated 19-Mar-2021, 19-Feb-2021, 20-Jan-2021, 18-Dec-2020, 20-Nov- 2020 & 20-Oct-2020
- 6 full month's of bank statements dated 16-Mar-2021, 15-Feb-2021, 16-Jan-2021, 16-Dec-2020, 16-Nov-2020 & 16-Oct-2020
- Letter from employer, dated no more than 28 days before the date of application stating:
i) Current employment and salary - Confirming the last 6 months paychecks Amounts and Dates (is there a template for this we can use)
ii) Length of employment - My wife has recently taken up another internal position which she starts from 01-Mar-2021. Would this cause any issues and does this need to be specifically highlighted in the employers letter? Should they state the continuous employment and her previous role prior to the new appointment?
iii) Length of time earning current salary - This will be one month as she would have been in her new role for one month at time of application.
iv) Type of employment
- Job contract - My wife does not have a full contract for the new internal role, only a job offer. She does have a full contract for her previous role.
- Latest P60 - This will be for 2020

Proof of Relationship
- Marriage certificate
- Divorce Decree for previous marriage
- 6 items of original mail under joint names spread evenly over the last 2 years from 3 different sources (need to start looking at this and I will post this as soon as we have collected this)

Residential Requirements
- Current tenancy agreement (We have moved in the last year, do we need to submit previous tenancy agreements)

Finally, is there anything else that is missing from the list?

Thank you all for your help 

My wife's spousal visa for is up for renewal soon. We were quite lucky first time around with our turnaround time of just 3 weeks. Looks like the current processing times are around 3 months.

We have just had one approval within about 1 month of giving biometrics, so things may be starting to speed up a bit now.

- My wife (USC) and myself (UKC) filing for her FLR(M)
- Wife entered the UK on 05-October-2018
- Current BRP was issued on 03-Sep-2018 and it is is valid until 03-June-2021

If she entered the UK on 5th October 2018, she will reach 30 months in the UK on 5th April, which means she can apply as early as 8th March if she wants to.

Just going to rearrange your documents into the various different upload sections on the UKVCAS website. Any comments are in blue, and any missing documents are in red:

Application Documents
- Applicant's passport... full scan of every page (photocopies are not needed because everything is scanned and uploaded now)
- Signed sponsor's declaration
- Part 1 of the consent to checks forms, signed by the applicant
- Part 2 of the consent to checks forms, signed by the sponsor
(and yes, you have the correct application link)

Proof of Identity/Travel History
- Partner's UK passport ... full scan of every page (photocopies are not needed because everything is scanned and uploaded now)
- Scan of current BRP

Financial Requirements
- 6 full month's of pay slips dated 19-Mar-2021, 19-Feb-2021, 20-Jan-2021, 18-Dec-2020, 20-Nov- 2020 & 20-Oct-2020... these only cover 5 months, not 6 months and will NOT meet the visa requirements. The 6 months you must cover is 19th September to 19th March and every single day must be explicitly covered, so you MUST include the September payslip as well... but if it's dated 20th September, not 19th September, you will ALSO need the August payslip, to cover 19th September
- 6 full month's of bank statements dated 16-Mar-2021, 15-Feb-2021, 16-Jan-2021, 16-Dec-2020, 16-Nov-2020 & 16-Oct-2020... again this is only 5 months of statements and will not meet the requirements. They MUST cover back to either the September payslip or the August payslip depending on whether the September payslip is dated 19th or 20th

- Letter from employer, dated no more than 28 days before the date of application stating:
i) Current employment and salary - Confirming the last 6 months paychecks Amounts and Dates (is there a template for this we can use)
ii) Length of employment - My wife has recently taken up another internal position which she starts from 01-Mar-2021. Would this cause any issues and does this need to be specifically highlighted in the employers letter? Should they state the continuous employment and her previous role prior to the new appointment?
iii) Length of time earning current salary - This will be one month as she would have been in her new role for one month at time of application.
v) Type of employment

Okay, so in your wife's case, the letter must state:
i) current job title and salary
ii) length of employment (1 year and 10 months)
iii) length of time earning current salary (1 month)
iv) previous salary
v) length of time earning previous salary
vi) type of employment
vii) verification of each electronic payslip, stating: pay date, gross pay, net pay, date paid into bank account (easiest just to put it in a table)
viii) an explanation for any discrepancies between dates and amounts on the payslips and dates and amounts on the bank statements (i.e. if she was paid on a different day because of a bank holiday)

- Job contract - My wife does not have a full contract for the new internal role, only a job offer. She does have a full contract for her previous role. This is fine - the contract is only optional and is mostly to show she has been with the company for more than 6 months and that it's a genuine job
- Latest P60 - This will be for 2020

Residence in the UK
Accommodation
- Current tenancy agreement (We have moved in the last year, do we need to submit previous tenancy agreements) No, you only submit the current one, because you are proving CURRENT and FUTURE accommodation
- Latest council tax bill
Cohabitation
- 6 items of original mail under joint names spread evenly over the last 2 years from 3 different sources (need to start looking at this and I will post this as soon as we have collected this)

Other
- Marriage certificate
- Divorce Decree for previous marriage

Thank you so much again.  Yep, we realized that we could apply earlier but we want to give ourselves the next few weeks to get everything sorted !

Ahh that's a crucial mistake on the payslips and bank statements  , we will include the previous ones and also the subsequent bank statements to cover every single day.

With regards to the council tax statement, our last one was in August and I have a feeling we may not get another one until mid April 2021 which will be past our application date. Would it matter that the latest council tax statement will be around 8 months old at the time? Our council tax bills are paper based but they do not seem to come through that often.

Thank you ksand24

With regards to the council tax statement, our last one was in August and I have a feeling we may not get another one until mid April 2021 which will be past our application date. Would it matter that the latest council tax statement will be around 8 months old at the time? Our council tax bills are paper based but they do not seem to come through that often.

No, that’s fine.

You just send the most recent one you have received at the time of application, which may be up to a year old, since council tax bills usually only come through once a year... generally in March or April when the new tax year begins (detailing your payments for the next year).


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No, that’s fine.

You just send the most recent one you have received at the time of application, which may be up to a year old, since council tax bills usually only come through once a year... generally in March or April when the new tax year begins (detailing your payments for the next year).


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Hi ksand24,

We have collected the paper bills we will be using for the cohabitation documents . These are as follows:

1. March 2019 - Joint Council Tax statement dated 12/03/19
2. July 2019 - Joint Barclays Bank statement dated 19/07/19
3. October 2019 - Joint Water Bill dated 08/10/19
4. March 2020 - Joint Council Tax statement dated  11/03/20
5. July 2020 - Joint Barclays Bank statement dated 21/07/20
6. November 2020 - Joint Natwest Bank statement dated 13/11/20
7. March 2021 - Joint Barclays Bank statement dated 19/03/21 (yet to receive)

These are 7 documents in total and cover the last 24 months and fairly evenly spread I should think besides maybe Oct 2019 - Mar 2020. We have got 3 sources from council tax, bank and water company. Would these be okay?

The other thing is that we have recently moved (August 2020) so 1-5 show the previous address and 6-7 show our current address. Should we clarify this somewhere in an applicant letter ? We can attach the previous tenancy agreement as evidence if needed.

Thank you !

Hi ksand24,

We have collected the paper bills we will be using for the cohabitation documents . These are as follows:

1. March 2019 - Joint Council Tax statement dated 12/03/19
2. July 2019 - Joint Barclays Bank statement dated 19/07/19
3. October 2019 - Joint Water Bill dated 08/10/19
4. March 2020 - Joint Council Tax statement dated  11/03/20
5. July 2020 - Joint Barclays Bank statement dated 21/07/20
6. November 2020 - Joint Natwest Bank statement dated 13/11/20
7. March 2021 - Joint Barclays Bank statement dated 19/03/21 (yet to receive)

These are 7 documents in total and cover the last 24 months and fairly evenly spread I should think besides maybe Oct 2019 - Mar 2020. We have got 3 sources from council tax, bank and water company. Would these be okay?

They look good - it's probably worth just adding an explanation for the October 2019 document not being in November, just to cover all bases. You can either put this in a cover letter, or just scan and upload a short note along with the cohabitation documents.

The other thing is that we have recently moved (August 2020) so 1-5 show the previous address and 6-7 show our current address. Should we clarify this somewhere in an applicant letter ? We can attach the previous tenancy agreement as evidence if needed.

Nope - there's nothing to explain, and the previous tenancy is irrelevant, so should not be included.

All they need to see is that for each document you provide, you are both shown to be living at the same address AS EACH OTHER. It doesn't matter how many different addresses you have lived at in the 2 years, as long as you can prove that you were both living at the same address at the same time for each 4-month period.

So, you just provide a document from whichever address you happened to be living at in March, July and Oct/Nov of each year.

They look good - it's probably worth just adding an explanation for the October 2019 document not being in November, just to cover all bases. You can either put this in a cover letter, or just scan and upload a short note along with the cohabitation documents.

Nope - there's nothing to explain, and the previous tenancy is irrelevant, so should not be included.

All they need to see is that for each document you provide, you are both shown to be living at the same address AS EACH OTHER. It doesn't matter how many different addresses you have lived at in the 2 years, as long as you can prove that you were both living at the same address at the same time for each 4-month period.

So, you just provide a document from whichever address you happened to be living at in March, July and Oct/Nov of each year.

Excellent, thank you for verifying this. Yeah the October 2019 is the only non evenly spaced. The reason being is that we don't have a different joint source for November 2019, I could use the bank statements again but that means we would only have 2 sources and the other timelines then don't quite align. I am hoping that as it's only out by a month, it's not a massive issue.

Moving to the employer letter, I have drafted up a letter that I am hoping my wife's HR can just use a template to issue her this. Think this covers everything you mentioned. There are no pay discrepancies between pay slip and bank deposits; just the date of payment in instances of weekends etc but this is reflected in the pay slip under pay date.

Template

Date (within 28 days from application submission)
To The Entry Clearance Officer,
Ref: Employment confirmation (Applicant Name)

I am writing to confirm that (Applicant Name) is currently employed at (Company Name) as (Job Title). (Applicant Name) has been employed on a permanent, full-time, salaried contract with us since 01st April 2019. The total length of employment till date is 1 year and 11 months. (Applicant Name) current annual salary is (Salary) and they have been earning this salary since 01st March 2021.

Prior to this, (Applicant Name) annual salary was (Previous Salary) for a period of 1 year and 10 months.

I can also confirm that the payslips and P60 provided with this application are authentic and correct, as follows: (below is meant to be in a table)

Period                               Pay Date         Gross Pay                Net Pay
August 2020         
September 2020         
October 2020         
November 2020         
December 2020         
January 2021         
February 2021         
March 2021         

P60 – Total pre-tax income of (Annual Income) covering tax year to 5 April 2020.

If you require further information please contact (HR contact)


Sincerely,
(HR Name)
(HR Role)
(Signature)

Excellent, thank you for verifying this. Yeah the October 2019 is the only non evenly spaced. The reason being is that we don't have a different joint source for November 2019, I could use the bank statements again but that means we would only have 2 sources and the other timelines then don't quite align. I am hoping that as it's only out by a month, it's not a massive issue.

It won't be an issue as long as you include a written explanation.

Having said that, though, you don't need to have joint sources - you can use 2 individually-addressed documents for November 2019 if you have any.

Examples of acceptable sources are:
• Letters or other documents from government departments or agencies, for example HM Revenue and Customs, Department for Work and Pensions, DVLA, TV Licensing.
• Letters or other documents from your GP, a hospital or other local health service about medical treatments, appointments, home visits or other medical matters
• Bank statements/letters
• Building society savings books/letters
• Council tax bills or statements
• Electricity and/or gas bills or statements
• Water rates bills or statements
• Mortgage statements/agreement
• Tenancy agreement(s)
• Telephone bills or statements

The employer letter looks good to me. However, it should not be addressed to the 'Entry Clearance Officer', because you are not applying for Entry Clearance this time, you are applying for an in-country visa extension.

Entry Clearance officers only process visa applications made OUTSIDE the UK (leave to enter visas), so when you apply for FLR(M) or ILR, your application will be dealt with by a different team within UKVI.

I'm not sure exactly what that job role is called though so I usually just suggest addressing it to "To Whom It May Concern"

It won't be an issue as long as you include a written explanation.

Having said that, though, you don't need to have joint sources - you can use 2 individually-addressed documents for November 2019 if you have any.

Examples of acceptable sources are:
• Letters or other documents from government departments or agencies, for example HM Revenue and Customs, Department for Work and Pensions, DVLA, TV Licensing.
• Letters or other documents from your GP, a hospital or other local health service about medical treatments, appointments, home visits or other medical matters
• Bank statements/letters
• Building society savings books/letters
• Council tax bills or statements
• Electricity and/or gas bills or statements
• Water rates bills or statements
• Mortgage statements/agreement
• Tenancy agreement(s)
• Telephone bills or statements

The employer letter looks good to me. However, it should not be addressed to the 'Entry Clearance Officer', because you are not applying for Entry Clearance this time, you are applying for an in-country visa extension.

Entry Clearance officers only process visa applications made OUTSIDE the UK (leave to enter visas), so when you apply for FLR(M) or ILR, your application will be dealt with by a different team within UKVI.

I'm not sure exactly what that job role is called though so I usually just suggest addressing it to "To Whom It May Concern"

Written explanation will have to do , we did realize and consider individual sources but I wanted to keep it to just single documents per period which has worked out okay(ish) and I think we may still struggle to find something for that month without messing up other ones ! That reminds me to change frequency of our bills in the lead up to ILR or it could cause future problems.

Aah oops, to be honest, I pretty much copied the template I had drafted for our first spousal visa application . Makes sense and I will remove this now !

Sorry, another couple of questions that need reaffirming after reading other threads:

- Does my wife (applicant) need to submit scanned copies of both her passports? Current passport renewed July 2019, the old one has the visa sticker in it and the arrival stamp, just before they brought in the e-gate route.
- All pages of wife's old and new passport + my passport must be scanned (Almost 180 pages)  Should probably buy a scanner now

I think these are it for now, we will start collecting the other documents and start the online application. Thank you 

Sorry, another couple of questions that need reaffirming after reading other threads:

- Does my wife (applicant) need to submit scanned copies of both her passports? Current passport renewed July 2019, the old one has the visa sticker in it and the arrival stamp, just before they brought in the e-gate route.

Yes, she will need to include all passports held since moving to the UK on her spousal visa.

Every page of each passport should be scanned.


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Hi ksand,

What format do the documents need to be uploaded in ? I have scanned our passports in .jpg format and they’re also around 661kb per page . Read somewhere on the forum that the passports need to fit within 6mb limit , at this rate one passport is already around 34mb.

Thanks


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Hi ksand,

What format do the documents need to be uploaded in ? I have scanned our passports in .jpg format and they’re also around 661kb per page . Read somewhere on the forum that the passports need to fit within 6mb limit , at this rate one passport is already around 34mb.

The upload specifications are listed on page 18 of the UKVCAS FAQs:
https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/soprasteria-ukvi-prd-ukvcas/FAQ.pdf

That’s prefect thank you !

Oh another note , I have just noticed something . We are aiming to submit the application on 16th of April. So we will be using March’s pay slip and corresponding April’s statement for the last document to complete the 6 months .

The March payslip is dated and deposited on 19th March whereas the April statement is going to be coming out / dated for the 16th of April . So at point of application submission , this will make the 19th of March the 29th day , annoyingly over the 28 day limit.

The other way is to submit the application on the 15th within the 28 days deadline and then go to the bank and print out the transactions from 15th March - 15th April. Do we have to get this stamped as well if we print this from the self help machines in the bank ? We had real problems last time with Nationwide refusing to stamp these .

Thank you again


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Oh another note , I have just noticed something . We are aiming to submit the application on 16th of April. So we will be using March’s pay slip and corresponding April’s statement for the last document to complete the 6 months .

The March payslip is dated and deposited on 19th March whereas the April statement is going to be coming out / dated for the 16th of April . So at point of application submission , this will make the 19th of March the 29th day , annoyingly over the 28 day limit.

In that case, you cannot apply on April 16th. You must apply on or before April 15th in order for the payslip to be valid.

All you need to do is go into the bank ASAP and ask them to print you a partial statement covering the payslip deposit on 19th March. Then you can apply online on any day up to April 15th.

i.e. if you go into the bank tomorrow and get a partial statement dated from March 17th to March 29th, you can apply on any day between March 29th and April 15th.

The other way is to submit the application on the 15th within the 28 days deadline and then go to the bank and print out the transactions from 15th March - 15th April. Do we have to get this stamped as well if we print this from the self help machines in the bank ? We had real problems last time with Nationwide refusing to stamp these .

 

As far as I am aware, statements printed from the self-help machines are not acceptable for the visa.

You will need to ask an employee at the bank to print a partial statement out for you on official bank stationery. You can ask them to stamp it if you like, though technically, it shouldn't need stamping if they have printed it themselves.

Hi again,

We are just in the process of filling out the application form and there is question which states 'How long have you lived in the UK'

Is this on the current visa only? My wife first moved to the UK in September 2015 on student visa and then switched over to T4 work visa in February 2017 and then left the country in June 2018; before returning on the current spousal visa in October 2018. So technically, she has lived in the UK for almost 5 years and 2 months.

and then there is a follow up question asking 'how long have you been outside the UK during this period'

Thank you