ILR Approved Despite Driving Conviction

[FriendlyGhost]

I'm writing this to help anyone in a complicated situation that I was in. Following are the details.

Background
I became eligible for ILR on 1st September, 2013. Last year I was given a fine and driving licence points by a Magistrates Court for driving without proper licence. It's worth pointing out that before the case hearing, in the summons letter from court, I was given an option of pleading guilty and not going to court. I chose to go to court and plead guilty. Now, from consultations with solicitors and questions on this forum, it appeared that this was the type of offence which would put your name on Police National Computer (PNC). The criminality threshold for ILR applications states that if your name is on PNC your application will be rejected. Your name remains on PNC for 24 months after court verdict. So I was still 5 months away from the 24 months completion when I applied.

Application
Despite the advice from solicitors (who wouldn't take my case) I applied for ILR by booking PEO appointment. In my application I declared the offence and in the covering letter, I explained that my offence was due to mis-interpretation of the law regarding international driving licences and that it wasn't intentional. I also provided printouts of relevant web pages from www.gov.uk. On the day of application, I waited for over six hours before being called by the case worker. He said that my application would have been rejected straightaway but because I had declared and explained the offence, he said that UKBA will consider it. He asked me to get a Subject Access Report (SAR) from police and send it to him.

I requested SAR which took about 35 days to come through. Interestingly, the SAR didn't have any records under my name. It turned out that the my driving offence didn't fall under the category where my name would have gone to PNC.

I sent the SAR to UKBA which then called me to confirm that ILR had been approved.

In the end...
It's worth noting that even when the case worker thought that my name is on PNC and that it had been less than 24 months since the court verdict, he was ready to consider it. That was mainly down to the fact that I had explained the offence and provided evidence of mitigating circumstances.

Hope it helps : )

[Amber]

Note that you may not be able to naturalise as British for 3 years from the date of conviction.

[FriendlyGhost]

That's okay, as long as I have the freedom to switch employers. Don't care about citizenship that much. But thanks for the heads up anyways.