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I'm British and my wife in Chinese and we moved back to the UK 5 years ago from Ireland where I was working as a post-doc and now have a little daughter (18 months old). We're just getting around to applying for permanent residence for my wife and I've just found that we need all the documentation that proves my work and residence in Ireland, even though we needed all that to get her 5 year residence card. The problem is, that after moving house twice and so on, we don't have any of it left. I can probably get some scraps from my old employer, though I was unemployed for a few months at the end of my time in Ireland before we moved back to the UK, I doubt I can get anything regarding that unemployed period in Ireland any more, and I won't be able to get anything regarding my tenancy. How much of a problem is this going to be, and can anyone suggest anything?

Jet Black wrote:I'm British and my wife in Chinese and we moved back to the UK 5 years ago from Ireland where I was working as a post-doc and now have a little daughter (18 months old). We're just getting around to applying for permanent residence for my wife and I've just found that we need all the documentation that proves my work and residence in Ireland, even though we needed all that to get her 5 year residence card. The problem is, that after moving house twice and so on, we don't have any of it left. I can probably get some scraps from my old employer, though I was unemployed for a few months at the end of my time in Ireland before we moved back to the UK, I doubt I can get anything regarding that unemployed period in Ireland any more, and I won't be able to get anything regarding my tenancy. How much of a problem is this going to be, and can anyone suggest anything?

Confirmation of PR is all about submitting adequate documentary evidence so yes, it could be a problem as you are responsible for backing up the application.
Any unexplained gaps will tend to break evidence of continuous exercise of treaty rights.
Moral of the tale: copy & scan everything; keep on Dropbox &/or a USB harddrive 'for ever'.

Try contacting education authorities & also tax authorities for evidence of economic activity / employment eg tax/NI records.

Surely you can contact past landlords re tenancies ( ? )
How about the bank for copies of historic bank statements?
Contact medical services for past record of doctor/dentist/optician registration.
Try similar for local school (if you have any children) also local council & local library?

Long shot - try a UKVI SAR for border crossing records; that may help prove when & where someone was.
Non-EEA national's passports should be stamped too which helps with demonstrating residency.

However, note that by returning under Surinder Singh, and due to case law of Eind, you won't have had to exercise treaty rights whilst back in UK. So in a sense your wife, as dependent family member of an EEA national, may simply have to demonstrate 5 years of residency here in UK in order to acquire PR.

Well we have lots of documentation on residence in the UK, so none of that is a problem. I find it odd that we have to provide Irish documentation that is over 5 years old though, because we had to provide all of that in order to get the 6 month and 5 year permits that she already has. Don't those count as evidence?

I'll get what I can from former employers though.

Looking at my first post, it may have been a bit vague:

I do have lots of documentation about the past 5 years in the UK from banks, mortgage, medical, work, tax etc proving that both my wife and I have been living and working here the whole time.

What I don't have is the very old documentation from Ireland (work and residence documentation) - though we had to submit all of this in order to get the 5 year residence in the UK.

If you are a UK citizen, why not just have your spouse apply for UK citizenship? I forget the specifics of a spouse applying for UK citizenship but I think 5 years is enough...

jbminger wrote:If you are a UK citizen, why not just have your spouse apply for UK citizenship? I forget the specifics of a spouse applying for UK citizenship but I think 5 years is enough...

She needs to have PR before qualifying for British citizenship.

Casa,

If you have a 5 year EEA residence card and married to a UK citizen, is it not possible to skip applying for PR and apply directly for UK citizenship?