How the calculator counts
- Counted back from your first application day. The period ends 12 months after your ILR grant, on the grant date for spouses, or today if that has passed.
- Whole days only. As for ILR, travel days count as days in the UK.
- Be in the UK on day one. You must have been in the UK on the first day of the period. The calculator checks it against your trips.
- Other requirements aren't checked. Good character, English and the Life in the UK test are up to you.
The British citizenship absence rule
You can be outside the UK no more than 450 days across the 5 years before applying, and no more than 90 days in the final 12 months. Spouses of British citizens get a shorter route — 3 years and 270 days. Either way you must hold ILR when you apply.
Absences for ILR
Before citizenship comes ILR, with its own test: no more than 180 days outside the UK in any 12-month period of the qualifying period. ILR looks at any 12 months, citizenship at fixed totals counted back from one date, so the same trips can pass one and fail the other.