What happens after I get ILR?

Your status is now an eVisa

ILR is no longer issued as a card. Biometric residence permits stopped being valid on 31 December 2024, and new grants of settlement exist only as an eVisa: an online record of your immigration status attached to your UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) account. When the decision arrives you get a letter or email confirming the grant, and the account updates to show indefinite leave to remain. There is nothing to collect and nothing to renew. Four things to do in the first week:

1. 1Log in to your UKVI account and check the status, your name, date of birth and nationality as displayed. Errors are far easier to correct now than at a border.
2. 2Make sure the passport linked to the account is your current one. Airlines and Border Force look up your status against the passport you travel on; if you renew it later, update the account before you fly.
3. 3Try the view and prove service once. It generates a share code, valid for 90 days, that an employer, landlord or bank uses to see your status. You will need one whenever a right-to-work or right-to-rent check comes up.
4. 4Tell your employer the outcome. If you were on a sponsored visa the sponsor should note that you are now settled and no longer need a Certificate of Sponsorship for any future role.

Work, study and public funds

Work

ILR carries no conditions on work. You can change employer without any sponsorship, take a second job, become self-employed, start a company or stop working altogether. The Skilled Worker salary threshold, the going rate and the occupation code cease to matter the day the grant is made. Study is likewise unrestricted, and you are normally treated as a home student for fee purposes once you also meet the ordinary residence rules for funding.

Public funds

The "no recourse to public funds" condition that applied on your visa falls away. As a settled person you can claim benefits such as Universal Credit, Child Benefit and Housing Benefit, and apply for social housing, on the same basis as a British citizen. Some means-tested benefits also apply a habitual residence test, which looks at how settled you are in the UK in fact rather than in law; a person who has just returned from a long spell abroad can fail it for a short period even with ILR. Beyond that, no benefit claim affects your settlement.

Travelling in and out of the UK

You travel on your own passport, and your ILR is read electronically from the eVisa linked to it. There is no separate travel document to carry, though many people keep a screenshot of the status page or a printed decision letter as a fallback. Two points people often get wrong:

• ILR does not change which countries you can visit. Visa-free access is decided by your nationality, not by your UK status. A small number of countries let UK residence permit holders enter without a visa or with a lighter process; the list is set out on the UK residence permit visa-free countries page. Everywhere else, check the rules for your passport.
• Time abroad is now counted for a different reason. The 180-day cap that governed your visa years no longer applies. What replaces it is the two-year lapse rule, explained below, and — if you want citizenship — the naturalisation absence limits. Keep recording your trips; the purpose has changed, not the need.

The one way to lose it by accident: two years away

Indefinite leave is indefinite in time, but it is not unconditional. It lapses automatically if you remain outside the United Kingdom for more than two years continuously. There is no application to refuse and no warning: on the day the two years pass, the leave ceases to exist, and you would need a Returning Resident visa (which requires strong ties and an intention to settle) to come back to live. The rule is set out in full on the ILR two-year absence rule page.

If your settlement is EU Settlement Scheme settled status rather than ILR under the Immigration Rules, the period is longer: five years continuous absence (four for Swiss citizens). The detail is on keeping settled status.

A single visit to the UK resets the two-year clock, but treat that as a safety net rather than a plan. A returning resident who has been away for long stretches — even short of two years — can be questioned at the border about whether the UK is still their home, and the habitual residence test for benefits looks at the same facts.

Losing it deliberately: revocation

Separately from lapsing, the Home Office can revoke ILR. The grounds are narrow and serious:

• Deportation following a criminal conviction, or a decision that your presence is not conducive to the public good.
• Deception — false representations or concealed facts in the ILR application or an earlier one on which it relied.
• Ceasing to be a refugee, where ILR was granted on the basis of refugee status or humanitarian protection and that status has been revoked.

Ordinary life — changing jobs, claiming benefits, a speeding fine, a period of unemployment — does not put settlement at risk. The full picture of how ILR can be lost, and what can be recovered, is on can you lose indefinite leave to remain.

The next step: British citizenship after 12 months

For most people ILR is a staging post. You can normally apply to naturalise as a British citizen once you have held ILR (or settled status) for 12 months, provided you also meet the residence requirements: five years in the UK before the application date, with no more than 450 days outside the UK in those five years and no more than 90 days in the final twelve months, plus presence in the UK on the exact date five years before you apply. Spouses and civil partners of British citizens skip the 12-month wait and are tested on a three-year period (270 days and 90 days).

The absence limits are where a settled person’s travel record comes back into play. Five years of trips counted for ILR overlap almost entirely with the five years counted for citizenship, and a heavy travel year late in the period can push the citizenship date out even though ILR is safe. The ILR to citizenship timeline sets out the sequence, and the UK naturalisation absence calculator tests your trips against both the 450-day and 90-day limits and tells you the earliest date the record supports.

Citizenship also ends the two-year lapse risk permanently: British nationality cannot be lost by living abroad. Until then, both rules depend on the same thing — an accurate, day-by-day record of when you were in the UK and when you were not. Bounded keeps that count running in the background after ILR is granted, so the number you need for the naturalisation form, or to prove you never approached two years away, is already there. For the whole journey from first visa to passport, see the guide to indefinite leave to remain.

Sources

• GOV.UK — Online immigration status (eVisa)
• GOV.UK — View and prove your immigration status
• GOV.UK — Returning Resident visa
• GOV.UK — Become a British citizen