Indefinite Leave to Remain: The Milestone Before Citizenship

The indefinite leave to remain fee is £3,226 per person, and ILR is the milestone that actually changes your life in the UK, not the one that gets the headlines. Citizenship gets the ceremony and the passport. ILR is the step before it, and it’s the one that stops the visa fees, ends the annual health surcharge, and lets you stay for as long as you like without ever renewing anything again. If you’ve already worked through what the Skilled Worker visa itself costs, this is what you’re actually paying toward.

What settlement actually gives you, and what it doesn’t

Indefinite leave to remain is the UK’s permanent residence status. It entitles you to live, work and study here for as long as you like, and to claim benefits if you’re otherwise eligible, without a further visa application. It is not citizenship. It’s the precondition for citizenship, the thing you have to hold before you can apply for a British passport, but it is its own separate status with its own separate qualifying period, and plenty of people hold ILR for years, or permanently, without ever applying for citizenship on top of it.

The indefinite leave to remain fee, and the surcharge you don’t pay again

Call it the ILR fee or the settlement UK fee, the number is the same: £3,226 per person for 2026, in the Home Office fee table that took effect on 8 October 2026 and left this fee unchanged from the 8 April 2026 table. A partner or child applying alongside you pays the same amount individually, not a discounted household rate. Faster decisions cost extra where they are offered: £500 for the priority service and £1,000 for super priority. GOV.UK’s pages disagree on the timing for settlement. The Skilled Worker settlement page says five working days and the end of the next working day. The general faster-decision page says settlement cases under priority usually take 30 working days. The application shows which service you can choose, so confirm the timing before you pay.

Here’s the nuance most cost breakdowns skip: if you’re granted ILR outright, you do not pay the Immigration Health Surcharge again on this application. You already paid it, potentially thousands of pounds of it, on your original work visa, and this is the point where that stops. The one exception is worth stating precisely rather than glossing over: if the Home Office decides to grant you limited leave instead of the settlement you applied for, you do have to pay the surcharge again before that leave is issued. It’s a real possibility, not a formality, which is one more reason a borderline application is worth getting checked before you submit it.

Five years, on this route specifically, not as a general UK rule

Meeting the indefinite leave to remain requirements takes more than reaching five years on a calendar. On the Skilled Worker, Health and Care Worker, T2 and Tier 2 route, the qualifying period is five years of continuous residence and lawful work in the UK. That figure gets repeated everywhere as though it’s the UK’s settlement rule, and it isn’t. Other routes run to genuinely different timelines: two to three years on some of the older Tier 1 categories, three years for Innovator Founder or Global Talent visas, five years on the UK Ancestry and BN(O) routes, and ten years if you’re relying on long residence with no other qualifying route behind you. If you’re not on the Skilled Worker route specifically, check your own route’s page on gov.uk rather than assuming the five-year figure applies to you.

Reaching five years isn’t the only test. Gov.uk also requires a current document from your employer confirming you’re still needed in the role and that you continue to meet the salary requirements at the point you apply, not just that you met them once, years ago, when the sponsorship started. ILR checks where you stand today, not only how long you’ve been here.

The 180-day rule is a rolling window, not an annual allowance

The 180-day rule UK visa holders have to track isn’t an annual allowance, and it isn’t “six months away per calendar year.” You must not be absent from the UK for more than 180 days in any rolling 12-month period, checked at every point across the whole five years, and every kind of travel counts toward it, personal and business alike. Someone who thinks of themselves as comfortably within “six months a year” can still fail this test depending on exactly how their trips cluster, because the window moves continuously rather than resetting on 1 January.

There are named exceptions, and they are genuinely narrow: helping with an international humanitarian or environmental crisis overseas, travel disruption caused by a natural disaster, military conflict or a pandemic, and compelling and compassionate personal circumstances. These can be disregarded when your absences are calculated, but the burden is on you to evidence them, not to simply assert them. If your absences are anywhere near the edge of this limit, this is the single point in the whole ILR process where the cost of getting it wrong is a failed application, not a fixable mistake. It’s exactly the situation an OISC-regulated immigration adviser or solicitor exists for. Calculating your own rolling-window absences from memory, on a five-year span, is not something to trust to a blog article, including this one.

When to actually apply, and the mistake that costs you £3,226

Getting the timing wrong here is the single most expensive mistake in the whole indefinite leave to remain fee process, since a refused early application isn’t refunded. Gov.uk is specific here in a way that’s worth repeating exactly: “The earliest you can apply is 28 days before you’ve been in the UK for 5 years on a qualifying visa.” Apply any earlier than that 28-day window and the guidance is direct about the consequence too: “Your application may be refused if you apply earlier.” That refusal isn’t a formality you can shrug off and resubmit for free. Visa application fees are non-refundable when an application is refused on the merits, and an application submitted too early is refused on exactly that basis, not waived or held for you.

The other direction carries its own risk. Don’t let your current visa expire while you’re waiting for your five-year mark to arrive; if it does, you have to renew it first, technically a further leave to remain application rather than a second attempt at ILR, before you can apply for ILR at all, which resets a clock you’d rather not be resetting. The practical answer is to mark your five-year date the moment you have it, and start the application inside that 28-day window deliberately, not whenever you happen to get round to it.

The Life in the UK test

You’ll need to book and pass the Life in the UK test if you’re between 18 and 64. It costs £50, runs 45 minutes, and asks 24 questions on British traditions, customs and institutions, drawn from the official Life in the UK handbook. Book at least three days ahead; there are more than 30 test centres. You’re exempt if you’re under 18, 65 or over, have already passed it before, or have a documented long-term physical or mental condition that prevents you sitting it.

The English requirement, and the date it changes

For an application made today, this is the good news in the process, and it contradicts what a lot of people assume. On the Skilled Worker, Health and Care Worker, T2 and Tier 2 route specifically, you do not need to prove the English language requirement again when you apply for ILR. You already did it when you applied for the visa itself, and gov.uk says so directly: you don’t need to repeat it “because you did this when you applied for your visa.” That changes on 26 March 2027. For Skilled Worker settlement applications made on or after that date, the Immigration Rules (Statement of Changes HC 1691, laid on 5 March 2026) require English at CEFR level B2 in speaking and listening, unless an exemption applies. The Home Office’s explanatory memorandum says this covers people already on the pathway to settlement. If your five-year date falls after that, plan to show B2 English. If you switched routes partway through, or you’re applying via a different pathway, check this against your own route rather than assuming it carries over.

The proposed change that could double the wait, and hasn’t happened yet

In May 2025, the government published a white paper, Restoring Control over the Immigration System, proposing to extend the standard settlement qualifying period from five years to ten, with shorter periods for some higher earners and public-sector workers. The consultation on the detail, which the government calls earned settlement, closed in February 2026. On 15 September 2026 the Home Secretary told MPs the final policy would be published later this year. As of 9 October 2026 it has not been written into the Immigration Rules for the Skilled Worker route, and there is no confirmed start date. The consultation also proposed applying the new rules to people already in the UK who have not yet settled. No final decision on that has been announced.

Here’s what that means if you’re reading this today: the five-year figure in this article is the current rule, verified against gov.uk, not a prediction about what will still be true when you personally reach your own five-year mark. If you’re early in your qualifying period, this is worth checking again periodically rather than treating it as settled once and forgetting about it, because it is the change on this page that would most alter the plan you’re making right now.

What comes after

Once you hold ILR, citizenship becomes something you can apply for, though not immediately for most people: you’ll usually need to hold ILR for 12 months first, at a current cost of £1,839 (£1,709 to apply plus a £130 citizenship ceremony fee), before you’re eligible to apply for naturalisation. The one common exception is if you’re married to or in a civil partnership with a British citizen, in which case that 12-month wait doesn’t apply. Citizenship has its own timeline and its own tradeoffs, and this article doesn’t cover it in depth for that reason. ILR itself buys you something simpler than that, immediately: no more visa renewals, no more annual health surcharge calculations, and the right to stay for good. And if you haven’t sorted this yet, it’s worth reading alongside what the visa stage itself costs and registering with a GP, which is worth doing in your first week in the country rather than waiting for either of these longer-term processes to resolve. The United Kingdom hub has everything else this site covers on the move.

Frequently asked questions

How much is the indefinite leave to remain fee?

£3,226 per person, in the fee table effective from 8 October 2026 (unchanged from 8 April 2026). A partner or child applying with you pays the same amount individually. Where they are offered, priority service adds £500 and super priority adds £1,000.

Do I have to pay the Immigration Health Surcharge again when I apply for ILR?

No, not if you’re granted ILR outright. You already paid it on your work visa. You only pay it again if the Home Office grants you limited leave instead of the settlement you applied for.

Is the five-year qualifying period the same for every UK visa route?

No. Five years applies to the Skilled Worker, Health and Care Worker, T2 and Tier 2 route, and separately to the UK Ancestry and BN(O) routes. Other routes range from two to ten years. Check your own route’s gov.uk page rather than assuming five years applies.

How many days can I spend outside the UK during my qualifying period?

No more than 180 days in any rolling 12-month period, checked continuously across your whole qualifying period, not as a per-calendar-year allowance. Narrow exceptions exist for humanitarian work, disrupted travel and compassionate circumstances, but you need to evidence them.

Do I need to retake an English language test for ILR?

Not for an application made before 26 March 2027 on the Skilled Worker, Health and Care Worker, T2 or Tier 2 route: you already met the requirement when you applied for your visa. From 26 March 2027, Skilled Worker settlement applications must show English at level B2 in speaking and listening, unless an exemption applies. You do still need to pass the Life in the UK test if you’re 18 to 64.

Sources

• Check if you can get indefinite leave to remain, GOV.UK
• Indefinite leave to remain if you have a Skilled Worker, Health and Care Worker, T2 or Tier 2 visa, GOV.UK
• Pay for UK healthcare as part of your immigration application: who needs to pay, GOV.UK
• Continuous residence guidance (accessible version), GOV.UK
• Life in the UK Test, GOV.UK
• Get a faster decision on your visa or settlement application, GOV.UK
• Home Office immigration and nationality fees, 8 October 2026, GOV.UK
• Changes to UK visa and settlement rules after the 2025 immigration white paper, House of Commons Library
• Indefinite leave to remain: time in the UK, GOV.UK
• Statement of changes to the Immigration Rules: HC 1691, 5 March 2026 (Appendix Skilled Worker, paragraph SW22A.1), GOV.UK
• Explanatory memorandum to HC 1691, 5 March 2026 (paragraphs 5.60 to 5.62), GOV.UK
• Apply for citizenship if you have indefinite leave to remain or ‘settled status’, GOV.UK

All sources re-checked on 9 October 2026. The five-year qualifying period stated here applies to the Skilled Worker/Health and Care Worker/T2/Tier 2 route as it stands today; the proposed extension to ten years is still awaiting the government’s final policy, with no confirmed implementation date, and could change the rule this article describes. Absence calculations are unforgiving and route-specific. Get an OISC-regulated immigration adviser or solicitor to check your own case rather than relying on this article’s arithmetic, especially if your time outside the UK is anywhere close to the limit.