Tier 1 (General) to ILR with 1 dependant success story

[braintree]

Tier 1 (General) to ILR with 1 dependant success story - Croydon PEO – Cohabitation documents analysis – and a big THANK YOU to all

I have been taking all the advice and support from the members of this forum for so long now that after I got my ILR today I am feeling practically guilty for never writing and contributing anything before. I would like to say a very big THANK YOU to all the members, it wouldn’t have been possible without you guys.

The appointment was a Croydon PEO for my wife and I and it was fairly smooth. Just took a little long at the first application screening before the biometric, only because I think the guy at the other side of the counter was new. It almost took the same time to get the decision after submitting the application. LOL. It took about an hour.

It was a Tier 1 (General) to ILR application as me the main applicant and my wife as my dependant. I have spent the last five years only as a Tier 1 (General) migrant, with all five years in UK (because I entered from PSW) except some short breaks and holidays. So for this kind of application the documents should be fairly straightforward and simple but I just didn’t want to take any chance. So submitted the following:

Application form
2 Photos of main applicant
2 photos of dependant
Passports, BRP cards
12 months payslip
12 months bank statement
Letter from employer showing the pay in that 12 months in a table format
Life in the UK test pass notification letters for both
Degree certificates for both my wife and I for English. Also self assessment summary to support the degree certificates
Joint bank statement for over 2 years (Cohabitation doc)
Council tax bills joint name covering 2 years (Cohabitation doc)
Water bill in joint name covering 2 years (Cohabitation doc)
Joint Mortgage statements covering 2 years (Cohabitation doc)
Wife’s payslips for two years (Cohabitation doc)
Wife’s own bank statement for two years (Cohabitation doc)

I have provided photocopies of every document (a lot of them in total!). I have looked through the returned photocopies to check which documents they have kept. They have kept everything and chosen few from the cohabitation documents. Council tax bills, water bills and mortgage statements were kept and those suffice the requirement I am guessing. Also these had both of our names so they have chosen them. They didn’t keep wife’s payslip or bank statement. They also didn’t keep our joint bank statement (I was thinking they will because it was for the whole 2 years and more). Probably they wanted to keep it simple. And those bank statements had a lot of pages. This probably proves that even if it’s not clear about how many and what type of documents to provide for cohabitation we do need to provide at least three types of documents with each covering 2 years.

Thank you all again guys. You have been extremely helpful in my journey to ILR.