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I'm trying to help my German mother apply for a British passport. She's been living in England (with legal permanent residency) since June 1981. Her husband (married 1981) was a Pakistani doctor who passed away in 2015. Since she's been here 36 years and now a widow, I was hoping this would be fairly straightforward but we've run into an issue, which is that all absences from the country (including holidays) need to be detailed exactly for the last 5 years.

Although they total less than 30 days per year, she takes many short trips (especially weekends) to Germany. The problem is that we have no exact dates for when these trips took place in the last five years. What she tends to do is pre-book several cheap flights well in advance, and then use only a few (if any) of them, rather than buy a more expensive ticket nearer the time. As a consequence, email archives of ticket bookings won't really help.

In the past year, for example, she took 8 short trips of 3-4 days each, while booking tickets for two dozen such trips (leaving many unused). For 4 and 5 years ago we have no idea what the dates of actual travel would be.

So although the total amount of time out of the country falls well within the limits, it's hard to know the exact dates.

Looking on this forum, we saw that people recommended doing a 'Standard subject access request'.

- Would a Subject Access Request have data on EU nationals moving within the EU? i.e. Britain <-> Germany?

- Has anyone else had luck with this?

- Are there any other archives that would record when holidays are made and passports scanned?

Any help would be much appreciated!

Not sure whether SAR will provide all the details but probably worth a shot. Though SARs are being discussed there doesn't seem to be much feedback as to the results. And there won't be any other source available, remember we have Freedom of Movement.

Personally I would suggest you / mother looks through paperwork and finds as much information regarding bookings and actual travel dates. Draft a list of absences to the best of your knowledge, remember the outbound and return days don't count. Draft an explanatory note to go with the application.

The main purpose for the information is to validate that the absence limits haven't been exceeded. From your posting it would appear not to be the case by a long way. Just to check, your mother has a document (letter, card, stamps in passport, etc) which confirms permanent residence?

Thanks for the reply. She does have all the documentation in regard to permanent residence.

In terms of the SAR form, we're wondering what people on here are ticking to get the information. "Printouts from casework database" would not seem to apply, nor "Work Permit", "Detention Records" or "Visa Application Forms". We wonder if the information needed - should it exist - would be in terms of "Home Office files (including Port, NASS)" and "Landing Cards".

Having looked through all the documentation we have, the last 2-3 years can mostly be exact but the 2-3 beyond that we don't have information for the dates of trips at all, let alone anything as specific as to not include outbound/inbound travel dates.

Does she have a smartphone?

If it's an Android phone, Google Maps will have tracked where she is daily and I believe it keeps data for longer than 5 years. You can see this data here: https://www.google.com/maps/timeline

If she's taken photos, that would be another way to figure out where she was on a particular day - smartphones record location in the photo metadata.

Unfortunately no smartphone or pictures of that kind Also no receipts we still have from that period.

Even if the absence history is incomplete, the HO can look them up for you. Incomplete absence period not hiding long term absences would not be considered deception or reason to refuse your application. Worst case it may just delay processing by a couple of weeks.