How much income is required to convert a spouse visa to permanent residency? £29,000 and the cohabitation proof list

After five years of the spouse visa, the most common question heard is: My salary has not been interrupted for these five years, and I have always lived with my partner. Is it guaranteed to pass the SET(M) application?

It's not necessarily the case. The most common problems along this path are not "whether you are qualified or not," but two separate issues: how the money is calculated, and whether you can use paper documents to fill in the past two and a half years of shared life. The former has a clear formula, while the latter has no formula and can only be achieved by accumulating things regularly.

£29,000 or £18,600, depending on the date of the first submission

April 11, 2024 is the hardest watershed on this path. Those who had already obtained a spouse visa before that day and have been with the same partner ever since are entitled to transitional protection, and renewal and final settlement will still be assessed under the old threshold of £18,600; for those applying for the first time from that day onward, the threshold is £29,000.

Many people only remember these two numbers, missing the structural differences between the two.

The second row in the table shows where the transitional protection is overestimated. The old scheme adds money for each non-UK child, while the new scheme does not. The actual threshold for a transitional group with two children is £24,800, and with four children it reaches the upper limit of £29,000 - exactly the same as the new scheme. Therefore, the statement "I came in before April 2024, the threshold is lower by £10,000" only applies to families without children or with only one child.

The third line is an algorithm difference in Appendix FM-SE that is easy to skip. For the first application and renewal, the deposit is used to meet the threshold, with the formula being £16,000 plus the threshold multiplied by 2.5, where £29,000 corresponds to £88,500; when it comes to settlement, it no longer multiplies by 2.5, but only requires the threshold plus £16,000, which is £45,000. The reason is that after ILR, there is no longer a new 2.5-year residency period to cover. The deposit must be held by you, the sponsor, or jointly by both of you, and must not be less than this amount for 6 months before the application, and it cannot fall below this amount on any day in between.

There are only three joint bills, how to make up?

The requirements for cohabitation certificate in SET(M) table is also a two-part structure.

有联名文件的，交 6 份寄给两人共同姓名、同一地址的信函；没有联名文件的，走另一条路——两人各自 6 份、共 12 份，地址必须一致。这两条不是二选一的偏好，是按你手上有什么来定的。

流传最广的一个说法是"同居证明凑够 6 份就行"。这句话漏掉了真正卡人的两个条件：这些文件要来自至少 3 个不同来源，并且日期要均匀铺满整个 2.5 年。六张同一家水电公司的账单，证明的是你们有一个共用账户，不是共同生活。

来源怎么算够分散，实操上按机构类别看：银行、地方议会（Council Tax）、水电燃气、GP 或 NHS、HMRC 或 DWP、房东或按揭机构、保险公司、TV Licence，这些互相之间算不同来源。同一家银行的两个账户不算两个来源。

分布的问题更隐蔽。搬过家的人、疫情后改成电子账单的人、把所有账都挂在一方名下的人，最后往往能拿出的是"最近八个月的十几份"，前面一年半是空白。这时候补不出纸，只能靠说明信解释，而说明信的效力远低于一张 2024 年寄来的 Council Tax 账单。

What to do before ILR

My judgment is that the order of planning should be reversed. Most people first focus on salary and savings, and leave organizing documents until the last three months, which is the wrong order.

The reasoning is straightforward. The financial gap is fixable: Category A only looks at pay stubs and corresponding bank statements from the six months prior to submission. You can get a higher salary job, include the self-employment income of the sponsor in the calculation, or use eligible cash savings, all of which can boost the numbers within six months. Co-habitation evidence cannot be made up — you can't ask the utility company in 2024 to send you a bill with the correct name from that year. Money is a six-month project, documents are a two-and-a-half-year project.

Three things you can do immediately: change at least two of Council Tax, family insurance, and broadband to joint names; each quarter, store a paper or PDF letter from different institutions, and create folders by year; verify that the Life in the UK Test transcript is still available (no expiration date, but the number must be findable) and that English level is B1 or higher — the spouse route requires B1 at this step of ILR, not A1 upon entry.

A complex income structure (self-employed, dividends, rental income, combined for two people) is worth having someone review the algorithm before submitting. For £5 on justiscript.com, you can get a written response from a qualified British lawyer within 24 hours regarding a specific issue, which is more cost-effective than guessing how to categorize Category B yourself.

📌 Final reminder about the timing: In the June 2025 assessment, MAC suggested lowering the threshold to the £23,000–£25,000 range, but the government has not yet adopted it, and the £29,000 level is still in effect. Don't rely on a reduction that hasn't happened yet; prepare based on the current figures, and make changes when they occur.

This article is for reference only. For specific issues, please consult a licensed attorney.

[Data Source] gov.uk/uk-family-visa/proof-income-partner; Home Office Appendix FM 1.7 Financial requirement; caseworker guidance; Immigration Rules Appendix FM-SE

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