British citizenship if you are an EU citizen

[robert23]

I am about to apply for citizenship and was thus going to enlist the help of a nationality checking service, but I've hit an unexpected bump.

I've lived here for the years required, exercising treaty rights. However, for a period of eight months a few years back, I worked in another EU state.

During that time, I continued to live in the UK, so I came back every single weekend, and often for longer (bank holidays, long weekends using my own holiday days, etc). Though I worked away for the eight months, with all the days I was back etc, I was gone (in number of days) for less than six months during that particular residency year (and all other residency years too, of course).

Thus I did not see any problem -- I never broke the six month residency requirement, and in the UK's eyes, I was self sufficient (and can show this with bank account statements, as required by self sufficiency people), and house ownership etc can all be used to show that I still lived here. Since I was gone for less than six months total in number of days, what I did abroad (I thought) was totally irrelevant as the residency requirement was never broken.

The person I am speaking to seems to be convinced that I no longer qualify though, and that my five years only starts (again) when I returned from that job.

Any thoughts? Am I missing something here?

Thanks for the help!