Settlement – family andlife, private life:life and bereaved partners: caseworker guidance
Immigration staff guidance on applications for settlement by those on the family and private life routes.
Documents
Details
UK Visas and Immigration guidance on how staff decide applications for settlement by those on the family and private life routes.
This includes:
- the 5-year family settlement route for partners and parents, including provisions for bereaved partners (Appendix FM)
- the 10-year family settlement route (Appendix Family Settlement)
- the private life settlement route (Appendix Private Life)
Updates to this page
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Updated validity and eligibility sections in the private life guidance, allowing children and young adults to rely on a previous grant of permission based on their private life; added continuous residence requirements for a child born in the UK, applying for settlement on the private life route; clarified the relationship requirements for partners whose sponsors held permanent residence as an EU national; clarified that permission granted under Appendix Private Life based on significant obstacles (PL 5.1) or Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention (PL 8.1) is considered permission on the private life route.
Update history
2026-08-19 11:29
Changes have been made to introduce guidance for paragraph 297 and paragraph 298 within Part 8 of the Immigration Rules, update references to Part Suitability and to improve accuracy of the information in the guidance. This document replaces versions 1 to 4 of the Settlement family and private life guidance.
2025-07-29 00:01
Updated validity and eligibility sections in the private life guidance, allowing children and young adults to rely on a previous grant of permission based on their private life; added continuous residence requirements for a child born in the UK, applying for settlement on the private life route; clarified the relationship requirements for partners whose sponsors held permanent residence as an EU national; clarified that permission granted under Appendix Private Life based on significant obstacles (PL 5.1) or Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention (PL 8.1) is considered permission on the private life route.
2024-10-09 09:00
Updated to reflect the introduction of a fee waiver for bereaved partners who are destitute.
2024-01-31 00:01
Updates throughout – see ‘changes from the last version of this guidance’ for full details.
2022-08-17 00:15
First published.