The good Immigration officer here pointed out that their main focus when looking at ILR applications is proof of cohabitation. And because they are wanting a few more documents than the UK mainland to prove just that, it prompts one to think laterally. Having just moved house, yesterday, I just received the detail of the mail forwarding service from the Post Office, which has our new address, previous address and each of my daughter's, wife's and my names on it. All on a nice sheet of Post Office headed paper. Perfect to bung in the ILR application box of papers.
John, you do well to think about such things in advance. Yes, I can see why IOM would want to pay a little more focus on that aspect. For the rest of the ILR applicants it's also very important on a number of issues, as you might imagine, however ther does does appear to be more credence given to the declaration than the evidence. (In my experience)
Now that we know that they just give such applications a quick once over, I guess they dont have time to get a proper squint at the evidence? I must say, though, that the Immigration officer appeared to state that it was important that the proof of cohabitation was present, comprehensive and relevant. Maybe at this stage in the game the approach is slightly different here?
I don't believe for one minute that many applications are given a 'quick once over'. I've yet to hear or read about anyone being refused an ILR on the basis of addressed-based documentation for cohabitation. You'd be surprised just how many people leave the application requirements until the last minute and then have to scramble around to meet the requirements. It seems that all manner of documents can be used.
I bet there are Peter. Whats more, I reckon there's a fair few folk wandering around with spouses perpetually on FLR, if you see what I mean. I have bumped into one or two. The hubby just stumps up for FLR as and when required. I was speaking to someone a few months back that seemed to be paying out for FLR every couple of years, or something like that, from what he was saying. I was thinking, imagine if you either didn't know or hadn't got your act together at the time for applying for ILR, how difficult it would be to gather up documentary evidence of cohabitation for ILR retrospectively, particularly if you didn't hoard paperwork as a matter of routine.
When I move (hopefully later in the summer) I plan to get my wife's name on everything. Pretty sure the letting agreement, council tax and utility bills all having both names will more than satisfy the UKBA come visa renewal time.
Yes. We can't submit council tax documents as we don't pay council tax . So that and the fact that we need to submit more docs than the UK, for ILR, has led to us being a bit more resourceful than perhaps we would otherwise be. I just moved a couple of days ago and I have my wife's name on both the old lease agreement and the new one.
