Will the permanent residency change to a 10-year period retrospectively apply to the old visa? ILR How to view the transition arrangement?
More than seven months have passed since the deadline for earned settlement consultation.
The consultation closed on February 12, 2026 at 23:59. As of today, September 18, 2026, no Statement of Changes has included "ten-year baseline" in the Immigration Rules, and the government has not yet published the consultation response and impact assessment. The entire set of rules for the five-year route remains fully valid, and the applications should be submitted as usual, with salaries calculated as £41,700 as required.
What really keeps people awake is not "whether it will be changed," but "whether the change will be applied to me."
Ten-year permanent residency new regulations, which stage is it currently in?
In November 2025, Home Office released "A Fairer Pathway to Settlement," proposing to extend the default eligibility period from five years to ten years, and then add or subtract years based on income, type of work, English proficiency, and compliance record. The three boundaries are currently clear:
Those who have already obtained ILR or settled status are clearly not affected; the partners, parents, and children of British citizens, as well as the BN(O) route, are retained in the proposal for five years; doctors and nurses under the NHS category are also included in the retention. The only ambiguous group is those who are already on the way but have not yet obtained permanent residency. The government's position is that the new system applies to "those who have not obtained permanent residency by the effective date," and the transitional arrangements for this group remain "to be determined."
In terms of timing, most professionals expect it to take effect in the fall of 2026, while some believe it may be delayed to early 2027. Before a definite effective date is determined, any statement like "starting XX month XX day, for ten years" is just speculation.
The rules on the day of submission are not necessarily the rules that will be used to assess you.
A saying circulating in the circle is: "Submit your application before the new regulations take effect, and it will be reviewed under the old rules." This statement does not hold under UK law.
Odelola v SSHD [2009] UKHL 25: The House of Lords held that the application should be decided in accordance with the Immigration Rules effective on the day , not the version on the day of submission; the applicant did not acquire a vested right to be assessed under the old rules. The judgment also mentioned that refunding the application fee would be an appropriate way to handle the situation if the change in rules made the application doomed to fail.
This means that what protects you is never the timestamp submission, but what Statement of Changes itself wrote. Each modified document's implementation section will list in detail: which applications are handled under the old rules, what date is used as the cutoff, and whether approved permits are exempt. The wording "calculating absence in segments before and after" that was introduced when Appendix Long Residence went live on April 11, 2024, came about this way.
My judgment: The filing date does not protect you, the approval date does.
How was this line drawn last time?
There was a previous operation highly similar, which is worth referring to. Tier 2 set a salary threshold of £35,000 during the permanent residency stage, which was announced in 2011 and came into effect on April 6, 2016; moreover, it only applied to those who entered Tier 2 on or after April 6, 2011, and those who had obtained work permits or Tier 2 before this date were completely exempt for the entire period. Five-year advance notice, plus "drawing the line according to the entry date," was the approach taken back then.
The two chambers of parliament have also made statements. The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee's report dated March 13, 2026, required that the transition arrangements be clearly defined and recommended that those who entered before 2021 and are on a ten-year path should not be subject to the new scheme; the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee's report in June 2026 considered that applying the "manifestly unfair" rule to those already on the eligibility path could lead to legal challenges. Both are committee reports and are not legally binding, so the government may choose not to adopt them.
So a reasonable expectation is: there will be transitional provisions, but they may be narrower than you hope. Take it as a planning assumption, not a safety net.
Finish these things before the rules are implemented.
1. Accurately calculate your expiration date down to the day, and submit it on the expiration day, do not delay due to waiting for policy clarification. When calculating continuous residence and the 180-day rolling window, use 永居计算器 to check day by day, it is reliable to count backwards from the passport.
2. Maintain the qualified status according to the current rules: salary does not drop, guarantee is not interrupted, outbound within 12 months does not exceed 180 days, and Life in the UK and B1 are completed in advance. Don't relax any of these just because "it might change in ten years".
3. Don't change your path now for the yet-to-be-written reduction-of-years program in the proposal. The cost of switching employers to chase a higher salary bracket, or taking the C1 exam to gain points, is real, while the benefits remain only in the consultation documents. If you're unsure which category you belong to, spending £5 on justiscript.com to get a written response from a UK practicing lawyer within 24 hours is much cheaper than acting on forum rumors.
4. On the day the new regulations were announced, don't look at the media headlines, go directly to Statement of Changes's final implementation section, and see how it describes the license issuance date for people like you.
This article is for reference only. For specific issues, please consult a licensed attorney.
[Data Source] gov.uk/government/consultations/earned-settlement; publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5901/cmselect/cmhaff/1409/report.html; publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200809/ldjudgmt/jd090520/odelol-1.htm
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