Post
by cmar2017 » Fri Apr 02, 2021 12:50 pm
Hi! Long time lurker, first time poster and I will add to the Naturalisation thread after my ceremony. I received an email of approval a few weeks ago.
I think you may be mistaken that you can have both Settled Status and Permanent Residence simultaneously.
As an EU national, Permanent Residency was specifically for EU/EEA nationals. I've noticed a lot of people, especially EU nationals, claim they have ILR. ILR as a status is only for non-EU/EEA nationals and this system has run parallel with different terminology for years, but the concepts are the same. When we exercised our Freedom of Movement and we immigrated to the UK, we automatically gained permanent residence. At two years, you could have formalised it with a Residency Certificate (a blue trifold document with a visa-like stamp documenting Certificate of Residency. At five years, you could apply for a Document Certifying Permanent Residency (DCPR). If you had this and as you may remember, you would have had to have paid for this. Like the Certificate of Residency, you would've received a trifold document with a visa-like stamp documenting Permanent Residency. Both documents are no longer being issued and any current ones are valid until the end of June 2021.
As you have already legally documented that you have lived here for five years, this has been easily converted to Settled Status under the EUSS. You can't have both, though you may have kept the aforementioned blue trifold document. You basically converted it to the moment you applied for EUSS.
So what you are mentioning is of the confusion you have encountered is absolutely and legally clear. You cannot apply with a DCPR if you have applied for the EUSS as a Settled Status and this has been approved. The DCPR previously did not expire, that is why if you obtained DCPR in 2016, and applied for EUSS in 2019 and received Settled Status in 2019, you wouldn't need to wait a year (2020) to apply for citizenship and could have applied the evening that you were accepted for Settled Status as you would have already documented living here since 2011. People who never formalised their residency under the currently phased out system of the DCPR may have also lived here since 2011, however, the only real documentation of this would be the EUSS. This is why for those who have lived here, for example since 2011 and without any DCPR, the British government has only the documentation of when you applied for EUSS. That is why many people have to wait the year. But for those who have DCPR, that £60 we paid gave us a bit of an advantage bureaucratically if we wanted to apply for citizenship.
Applying with settled status if you had permanent residence status
From 1 January 2021, if you had permanent residence status before you got settled status, you can count that time towards the 12 month qualifying period. You will not need a permanent residence document.
Therefore, it is not confusing but I hope this has clarified the situation. I've read throughout the threads here that many people exchange terms like ILR or PR, parallel schemes for non-EU/EEA and EU/EEA folks. People also confuse having permanent residency and have a DCPR. But if you remember paying the £60 and getting all your documents scanned, then you remember there was a difference.
So the bottom line is you can't have both DCPR and Settled Status. You simply just have a piece of blue paper. What I am interested in is whether those who have applied for citizenship with it must return them or could we keep them as souvenirs as it is so close to the end of June.
Myself, I have not applied for the EUSS as I have the DCPR and I applied with that. I received my successful application from HO Atlas a few weeks ago. It took just over a month from the biometrics. For me, this is all a worrisome adrenaline rush as if I don't complete the ceremony by the end of June, I will likely have to apply for EUSS and notify HO of my change of circumstance.
You also haven't clarified if you yourself are an EU national. Many people regard the biometric card as being a permanent residency card, which in some ways it is as a concept, and according to the government website and its use of terminology and linking, it is not. They are referring to the DCPR.
