ILR for Refugees and Humanitarian Protection: Your 5-Year Date

To qualify, you must have held refugee status or humanitarian protection for five continuous years in the UK. Use the final month of your current permission to send the form so it gets there before that permission ends.

The Home Office tells you to expect a reply within 6 months. This route does not include the faster super priority service.

The absence rules by route table lists each route's absence rule along with the specific rule that sets it.

No. No fee is charged for people with humanitarian protection, refugee status, or section 67 leave, and your partner and children are covered too.

Discretionary leave works another way: each person pays £3,226, and the time you need is 10 years for grants first made from 9 July 2012, or 6 years for grants made on 8 July 2012 or earlier.

No. Because the protection route is not among those the English and Life in the UK Test rule covers, this application does not call for either test.

The Home Office conducts a safe return review before reaching a decision: this checks whether protection is still needed. When settlement is refused but you still require protection, your permission on a protection route is extended by at least 30 months.

Returning to the country you fled can cause you to lose ILR on this route, so check before any travel there.

Before you can remain as a refugee, you are required to claim asylum. The claim must be made when you get here, or as soon as it becomes dangerous to return. You are usually not allowed to work while your claim is under review.

Your five years start on the day you received refugee status or humanitarian protection, not on the day you claimed asylum. Enter that grant date above.

A partner or child living in the UK as your dependant may be part of your application, and any children born here count too.