Will I Get ILR in 5 Years or 10? Skilled Workers, British Spouses and the Earned Settlement Rules

Married to a British Citizen on a Skilled Worker Route: Will I Settle in 5 Years or 10?

Since the government published its response on Earned Settlement, one theme comes up again and again in my inbox: “I am married to a British citizen, so surely I am on the faster route?” The honest answer is that it depends far less on who you are married to than on which immigration route you actually hold. Several similar looking situations can end in very different places.

One point I will come back to more than once, because it matters: this is the government’s response to its consultation, not the law. None of it is in force yet.

Before the detail, the headline numbers. Under Earned Settlement the default pathway to settlement (ILR) is proposed to become ten years. It shortens to five years for those earning at least £50,271, and to three years at £125,141, with £12,571 as the baseline contribution. These figures are flat and UK-wide, with no regional variation. They are proposed figures, not current law.

One principle runs through everything below: the shorter pathway attaches to the route you hold permission on, not to your marriage. The government response calls the family element a “British Connection”, and it applies to “eligible partners, parents and children of British citizens”, but only “provided the applicant meets the relevant route”. That relevant route is the family route (partner of a British citizen under Appendix FM), not the work route.

I’m on a Skilled Worker visa below the salary threshold but married to a British citizen. Will I get ILR in 5 years?

Here the difficult news. A Skilled Worker visa is a work route. Being married to a British citizen does not, on its own, move you onto the family route, and it does not hand you the five-year British Connection pathway. While you remain on the Skilled Worker route, your settlement timeline is governed by the work-route rules. If you earn at least £50,271 you can reach the five-year pathway. If you earn below it, you fall to the longer default pathway, regardless of your marriage.

So why does the marriage not help? Because the British Connection five-year route is tied to holding permission as the partner of a British citizen. The response lists Skilled Worker and Family (Partner) as separate routes. Marriage alone does not switch you from one to the other.

What can help is actually moving onto the partner of a British citizen route (Appendix FM). Once you hold permission on that route, you are within the British Connection and its five-year pathway. For a Skilled Worker on a lower salary, switching to the spouse route may therefore become the shorter and more secure path under the proposed framework. That route has its own requirements, including a genuine and subsisting relationship, the financial requirement and application fees, so it is a decision to weigh case by case rather than assume. And, again, none of this is law yet.

I’m a Skilled Worker dependant and I joined later. If the main applicant gets ILR in 5 years, can I also get ILR in 5 years even if they do not become British?

Yes. The key idea here is that a dependant partner’s timeline mirrors the main applicant’s route. If the main applicant is on the five-year pathway, that is, they earn at least £50,271 and qualify in five years, then you as the dependant partner are also on a five-year pathway. The main applicant does not need to become a British citizen. Their settlement (ILR) is enough, and your own five years are counted from the date you arrived.

The response sets this out directly with a worked example of a partner who joins later:

“A lead applicant comes to the UK on a five-year settlement pathway. Their partner joins them as a dependant two years later. The lead applicant can apply for settlement after five years. The partner will normally need to complete five years as a dependant and can therefore apply two years later.” (A Fairer Pathway to Settlement: government response, page 27)

Two conditions to keep in mind. First, this holds only where the main applicant is actually on the five-year pathway. If they earn below £50,271 and sit on the ten-year default, you as the dependant mirror that longer pathway instead. Second, you still need to meet the mandatory settlement requirements, such as the B2 English standard and Life in the UK, although the income can be met at household level rather than by you alone.

As with everything here, this is the proposed framework and not yet law. The current rules continue to apply until the Statement of Changes takes effect.

I’m on a Skilled Worker dependant visa. If the main applicant becomes British before I apply, will I get ILR in 5 years or 10?

This situation usually resolves more favourably, and for a clear reason. When the main applicant naturalises as a British citizen, you can no longer remain as their Skilled Worker dependant, because that status depends on the main applicant holding Skilled Worker leave. At that point you become the partner of a British citizen and move onto the family route.

The response treats partners of British citizens as a recognised British Connection and places them on the shorter route. It says:

“Under Earned Settlement, recognised British connections will continue to qualify for a five-year pathway, provided the applicant meets the relevant route and mandatory settlement requirements.” (government response, page 14)

On whether the time you have already built as a dependant is lost, the response limits that restriction to one direction only. It says:

“time spent on protection or human-rights routes … will not be able to be combined with time spent on work or family routes to meet the qualifying residence period. Where someone moves between these routes, the qualifying period for the new settlement pathway will start when they move onto it.” (government response, page 21)

A move from a work route (Skilled Worker dependant) to a family route (partner of a British citizen) is not the kind of move that triggers this reset, and the response expressly allows a qualifying period to be completed on “a route, or combination of routes”. On that basis your earlier dependant time should ordinarily count.

So the direction is clear: in this situation you should be on a five-year family pathway, not the ten-year default. What the response does not spell out is exactly how much of your earlier dependant time counts, and whether moving onto the partner route restarts any part of the clock. That detail is not yet settled. Because none of this is law yet, it will only become clear when the Statement of Changes is published in December.

The real lesson

The thread running through all of this is the same. In the first scenario, the marriage does not help, because you remain on the work route. In the dependant scenarios, it is the main applicant’s route that sets your timeline: if they are on the five-year pathway, so are you, counted from your own arrival, and if they go on to naturalise, you move onto the family route as the partner of a British citizen. It is the route you hold, or the route your sponsor holds, not the marriage certificate, that decides your timeline.

A necessary word of caution, and the reason I keep repeating it. This is a consultation response, not the law. None of it is in force yet. It becomes binding only through the Statement of Changes expected in December, with measures phased in from 2027, and the current rules still apply today. The precise mechanics, including exactly how earlier time is counted and how a switch is treated, will be confirmed then. If any of these scenarios sounds like yours, the sensible step is a proper assessment of your own facts before making any move.

This article is for general information only and does not constitute immigration advice. Every case is unique. Point B Legal is authorised at the highest level (Level 3) by the Immigration Advice Authority.

Written by Burcu Koroglu, Level 3 regulated immigration adviser and former UKVI officer.

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