The 180-day absence rule for ILR, with worked examples

The rule, in the Home Office's own words

The continuous residence requirement for settlement is set out in Immigration Rules Appendix Continuous Residence. The core rule (paragraph CR 3.1) is:

"the applicant must not have been outside the UK for more than 180 days in any 12-month period" (unless an exception in CR 3.4 applies).

Two things in that sentence do a lot of work, and both are where people go wrong:

1. "Any 12-month period" — not "each calendar year," and not "the 12 months before you apply." The Home Office checks every possible rolling 12-month window across your whole qualifying period. A window can start on any day, not just 1 January or your visa anniversary.
2. "180 days" — counted in whole days, not trips. Home Office guidance confirms only whole days count, and a short trip of under 24 hours generally won't register as a day absent.

Last verified: 2026-07-04 against Immigration Rules Appendix Continuous Residence (paragraphs CR 3.1–CR 3.4) and the Continuous residence caseworker guidance.

How the rolling window is actually checked

For permission granted on or after 11 January 2018 (which covers the large majority of current Skilled Worker and family route applicants), absences are assessed "on a rolling basis over any 12-month period" — the caseworker guidance's own phrase. That means the calculation isn't a single sum for your whole 5 years; it's the worst 12-month slice anywhere inside it.

This is exactly what our ILR Absence Calculator does: it builds a day-by-day picture of your whole qualifying period and checks every possible rolling 12-month window, not just the current year, so you can see which specific window is closest to (or over) the limit.

Worked example 1 — comfortably within the limit

Five years, four trips, spread out:

No 12-month window here gets close to 180 days — this pattern is typical of someone taking normal annual leave and poses no continuous residence risk.

Worked example 2 — a single long trip that breaches the limit

One extended trip: departs 10 January, returns 20 July the same year. That's around 190 whole days outside the UK — comfortably over 180 inside a single 12-month window (in fact inside a much shorter window, since the whole trip itself exceeds the limit). This is refused on continuous residence grounds unless a CR 3.4 exception applies (see below) — regardless of how the rest of the five years looks.

Worked example 3 — two trips that only breach the limit together

This is the case people miss, because neither trip looks dangerous on its own:

• Trip A: 10 January – 10 May (≈119 days)
• Trip B: 1 August – 10 November (≈101 days)

Neither trip alone is close to 180 days. But both fall inside the same 12-month window (10 January to the following 9 January), and together they total roughly 220 days absent in that window — over the limit. The 180-day rule looks at cumulative absence in any rolling year, not at individual trips, so two "reasonable" trips taken in the same 12 months can combine into a breach that neither one would cause alone.

Absences that don't count towards the 180 days

Rule CR 3.4 excepts several categories of absence from the count entirely, provided you can evidence them. As of the 1 July 2026 update to the Rules, these include:

• Compelling and compassionate personal circumstances — for example a life-threatening illness of the applicant, or the life-threatening illness or death of a close family member (the guidance's definition of "close family" extends to parents, partners, children, grandparents, siblings, step-parents, and grandchildren).
• Assisting with a national or international humanitarian or environmental crisis overseas.
• Travel disruption caused by a natural disaster, military conflict, or pandemic.
• Approved research activity for Skilled Workers in specified occupation codes, and for Global Talent endorsees.
• Specific Crown service and Settlement Family Life circumstances.

There's no fixed list of required evidence, but caseworkers are guided to expect documentary proof where it exists — medical certificates or records for illness, a sponsor letter and payslips/bank statements for humanitarian work. If you think an absence might qualify, gather that evidence at the time, not years later when you come to apply.

Mark a trip as a "permitted absence" in the ILR Absence Calculator to see your totals with it excluded — but keep the underlying evidence regardless, since it's the Home Office that decides whether an exception applies, not the calculator.

Related reading: the 28-day early application window explained and the ILR application step-by-step.