Will the permanent residency change to a 10-year period retrospectively review 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 23:59 on February 12, 2026. As of today, September 18, 2026, no Statement of Changes has included the "ten-year baseline" in the Immigration Rules, and the government has not yet published the consultation response or impact assessment. The entire set of rules for the five-year route remains fully valid, with applications to be submitted as usual and salaries to be calculated at £41,700 as required.
What really keeps people awake is not "whether it will be changed," but "whether the change will be attributed to me."
Ten-year permanent residency new regulations, which stage are you 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 unaffected; partners, parents, and children of British citizens, as well as those under the BN(O) route, are retained in the proposal for five years; doctors and nurses under NHS are also included in the retention. The only ambiguous group is the residents in the UK who are 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," but the transitional arrangements for this group remain "pending" in writing.
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 an official effective date is determined, any statement saying "starting XX0YY month XX1YY day for ten years" is just speculation.
The rules on the day of submission are not necessarily the rules for reviewing you.
A saying circulates in the circle: "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 in effect on the day when it should be decided according to , not the version on the date 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 handling if the change in rules caused the application to inevitably 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 grant date does.
How was it drawn last time?
There was a previous operation highly similar, which is worth referring to. Tier 2 set a £35,000 salary threshold 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. A five-year lead time, plus "drawing the line according to the entry date," was the approach taken back then.
The two chambers also expressed their positions. The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee's report dated March 13, 2026, required that the transition arrangements be clearly stated, and recommended that those who entered before 2021 and are on a ten-year path should not be subject to the new model; the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee's report in June 2026 considered that applying the "manifestly unfair" 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 clarity. When calculating continuous residence and the 180-day rolling window, use 永居计算器 to check day by day, comparing with the passport reversal is reliable.
2. Maintain the current standard: salary does not drop, guarantee is not interrupted, outbound for no more than 180 days in the past twelve months, and Life in the UK and B1 are completed in advance. Don't relax any of these just because "it might be changed in ten years."
3. Don't change your path now for the yet-to-be-written reduction-in-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 fall into, spending £5 on justiscript.com to get a written response from a UK-qualified 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 check how it describes the licensing 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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