UK Immigration and Local Government to help with marriage based permanent residence applications

The UK Border Agency together with local government will be providing further assistance with your indefinite leave to remain applications if you are the husband, wife, civil partner, unmarried partner or same-sex partner of a British citizen or someone with indefinite leave to remain in the UK.

A local authority officer will check your indefinite leave to remain application before it is sent to UKBA under the new "settlement checking service". The local authority officer will not be an expert on UK immigration and will not give immigration advice. UK Immigration feels that this service will help to make sure that applications are correct and complete before being sent to them.

Over the next two months the Councils below will be offering the new settlement checking service. You can currently use the settlement checking service in Brent, Barnet, Oxfordshire, and Stockport.

• Brent Council
• Barnet Council
• Cambridgeshire County Council
• Cardiff City Council
• Dudley Metropolitan Council
• Leeds City Council
• Liverpool City Council
• Manchester City Council
• Newcastle City Council
• Oxfordshire County Council
• South Lanarkshire County Council
• Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council

UKBA reminds people that they must meet all requirements for settlement before applying for permanent residence. Some of the requirements are as follows:

• You will in most cases need to show that you have a good knowledge of language and life in the UK – This is relevant if you are between the ages of 18 and 64.


• You cannot apply more than 28 days before the end of your 2-year qualifying period.

No immigration advice is given under the settlement check service. It remains to be seen how the system will work in practice. It should also be noted that in July 2011 indefinite leave to remain will probably be replaced by the more difficult "path to citizenship" scheme.