• FAQ

    I have settled status but left the UK. How long can I be away without losing my status?

    With settled status, you have a five-year absence allowance (four years if you are Swiss), so as long as you come back within those five years, even for a brief period of time, you can ‘reset the clock’ on your settled status.

    There is no definitive guidance on how long someone needs to return to the UK in order to reset their 'absence clock', but we have been informed that a simple visit back to the UK is sufficient.

    On 14 May 2020, Seraphus Solicitors submitted written evidence to the Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union. See their evidence, question ‘Settled Status grant Absences allowance’, which asks ‘If an ILR holder returns to the UK for 1 day within the 5 / 4 year allowance and leaves again, does the absence clock reset for another 5 /4 years?’ The Home Office replied to this question simply with ‘Yes’ – though we do not have a public link to these answers.

    Obviously careful evidence must be retained of returning back to the UK, so that you can demonstrate you were never out of the UK for more than a continuous five years (or four years if you are Swiss).

    More information on how absences affect your status can be found here: https://www.the3million.org.uk/absence-calculator

    Further information: Two slightly related questions have been asked of the CJEU. Note, these are EU cases and not about the UK situation. However, they have led to the Dutch Government’s conclusion that under the Withdrawal Agreement, British citizens in the Netherlands who obtain a right of permanent residence under the Withdrawal Agreement can maintain that right by simply visiting the Netherlands for a few days every less than five years. The UK only has an obligation to pay ‘due account’ to post-Brexit case law, but if UK courts were to ask the CJEU about the question above it is not unreasonable to expect they would receive the same answer.

    • C-432/20 (ZK, Austria), whether any brief presence interrupts absence and therefore prevents loss of EU long-term resident third-country national status (see this article on the judgment of 20 January 2022)
    • C-637/21 (K.R., Netherlands), whether any brief presence interrupts absence and therefore prevents loss of EU Permanent Residence status (see this article by K.R.’s attorney which explains that the Dutch Government settled in K.R.’s favour, following the ZK judgment. The CJEU case has therefore been withdrawn).

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