What counts as an absence for ILR?

The basic definition: whole days outside the UK

Appendix Continuous Residence of the Immigration Rules is the part that decides whether your time in the UK counts towards indefinite leave to remain. It measures absence in whole days spent outside the United Kingdom. The Home Office’s continuous residence guidance for caseworkers tells them to count only whole days and not part days, which settles the two edges of every trip:

• The day you leave the UK is not counted as a day of absence.
• The day you return to the UK is not counted as a day of absence.

So a trip that departs on Friday evening and lands back on Monday morning counts as two days of absence (Saturday and Sunday), not four. A same-day return — out in the morning, back at night — counts as zero. This is more generous than the way the Schengen 90/180 rule counts days, where both ends of a trip count, so do not reuse a Schengen tally for an ILR application.

Why you were away does not change whether a day counts. Holidays, business trips, visiting family, working remotely from abroad, medical treatment and study trips are all absences. The reason only matters if you go over the limit and need an absence disregarded (see the exceptions below).

The limit: 180 days in any rolling 12 months

Paragraph CR 3.1 of Appendix Continuous Residence sets the cap: you must not have been outside the UK for more than 180 days in any 12-month period during your qualifying period. Three features of that sentence catch people out:

1. 1It is rolling, not calendar. Every possible 12-month window inside your qualifying period is tested, not just January to December or visa year to visa year. A 100-day trip in November and another 100-day trip the following May sit in the same window. The exception is absence during permission granted before 11 January 2018: under CR 3.2 those days are tested in consecutive 12-month periods ending on the anniversary of your application date. On the 10-year long residence route, CR 3.3 also keeps the older caps for earlier travel: no single absence of more than 184 days that started before 11 April 2024, and no more than 548 days in total where that total was reached before 11 April 2024.
2. 2It is cumulative. All trips inside a window are added together. Twenty-one short trips of nine days each (189 days) breach the cap just as surely as one long one.
3. 3It applies across the whole qualifying period. Five years on Skilled Worker means roughly 1,460 distinct 12-month windows, and each one has to pass.

If any window exceeds 180 days and no exception applies, continuous residence is broken at that point and the clock generally restarts. The mechanics of the rolling window are explained on the ILR 180-day absence rule page and in how rolling windows work; the consequences for your application date are in when you can apply for ILR.

Absences that can be disregarded

Paragraph CR 3.4 lists the reasons for which time outside the UK does not count towards the limit. The caseworker does not ignore the absence automatically — you have to show the reason and support it with evidence — but where it is accepted, those days do not count against you. The general reasons are:

• Travel disruption due to natural disaster, military conflict or pandemic;
• Compelling and compassionate personal circumstances, such as a life-threatening illness of the applicant, or the life-threatening illness or death of a close family member;
• Assisting with a national or international humanitarian or environmental crisis overseas (with your sponsor’s agreement, if you are on a sponsored route).

A few narrower cases are tied to particular routes: research approved by the sponsor for Skilled Workers in listed research and higher-education occupation codes; research by Global Talent holders endorsed by the Royal Society, British Academy, Royal Academy of Engineering or UKRI, or who qualified through a listed prize; absences for work, study or supporting family overseas on the ten-year family life route while the family keeps its home in the UK; and accompanying a partner abroad on Crown service. Partners and children who were away with the person they depend on for one of these reasons get the same treatment (CR 5.1). Check the exact wording in Appendix Continuous Residence rather than assuming a colleague’s treatment carries over.

What does not qualify

Ordinary annual leave, a long visit home, a sabbatical, remote working from another country by choice, ordinary business travel, and being "asked" by an employer to spend months abroad without any of the CR 3.4 circumstances are not permitted reasons. Nor is not knowing about the rule.

Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands

The Common Travel Area lets you move between the UK, Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands without routine passport control, and you are allowed to travel there while an ILR application is pending. That does not make those places part of the United Kingdom. Time in Ireland is time outside the UK and counts towards your 180 days. The Crown Dependencies have one carve-out: under CR 3.5, if your most recent permission was granted in the UK, time you spent lawfully living in the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man on a route equivalent to a UK one is treated as time in the UK. A holiday or business trip to Jersey or the Isle of Man is not covered by that, so list it as an absence. Because there is often no stamp or eGate record for these journeys, they are also the easiest absences to forget when you compile your list.

Proving your absences

The application form asks you to list every absence during the qualifying period with dates and reasons. Caseworkers check this against Home Office travel records where they exist, and the guidance tells them to give you a chance to explain any inconsistency — an avoidable delay on an ILR application.

• Passport stamps are no longer reliable. eGates do not stamp on entry to the UK, and many other countries have stopped stamping too. A passport alone will not reconstruct your travel history. The Home Office's own record can be requested for free — see how to get your UK travel history — but it has gaps of its own.
• A day-by-day log is what caseworkers want — departure date, return date, destination, reason — supported by boarding passes, e-tickets, hotel bookings or employer letters for trips that need a permitted reason.
• Do it before you apply, not after a request. An accurate list at submission avoids the pause while you reconstruct it, and lets you spot a breaching window while you can still do something about it.

Bounded records border crossings automatically as you travel and exports the list, so the log exists before the form asks for it. To check the totals, the free UK ILR absence calculator applies the departure-and-return-day convention, tests every rolling 12-month window against 180 days and shows your earliest application date. The wider process — tests, fees, documents — is covered in the ILR guide and the document checklist.

Worked examples

• Weekend in Paris, Friday to Monday. Two days of absence (Saturday, Sunday).
• Three-week holiday, out 1 August, back 22 August. Twenty days of absence (2 to 21 August inclusive).
• Six months caring for a parent with a life-threatening illness abroad, plus 30 days of earlier holidays in the same 12 months. Around 210 days in one window — over the cap. If the illness is evidenced, the caring absence can fall under CR 3.4(c) as compelling and compassionate circumstances, and only the 30 holiday days count.
• Working from Dublin for three months. Roughly 90 days of absence: Ireland counts as outside the UK, and remote working by choice is not a permitted reason.

Quellen

• GOV.UK — Immigration Rules Appendix Continuous Residence
• GOV.UK — Continuous residence: caseworker guidance (8 October 2026)