Can You Get Citizenship with a Criminal Record?

The Relationship Between Criminal Records and Citizenship

British citizenship requires you to meet the good character requirement. The guidance applies to applications for registration and naturalisation from anyone aged 10 or over at the date of application.

The guidance says having a criminal record does not necessarily mean an application will be refused, but that a person who has not shown respect for, or is not prepared to abide by, the law is unlikely to be considered of good character. The factors it names include the nature of the offence, any escalation in offending, the time since it happened, the person's age at the time, and any exceptional or mitigating circumstances. It is published in full in the good character requirement guidance on GOV.UK.

The Sentence Thresholds

Until 31 July 2023 the guidance worked on waiting periods measured from the end of a sentence. It no longer does. For an application made on or after that date, the thresholds are these, and it is the whole sentence imposed by the court that counts, not the time served.

A Custodial Sentence of 12 Months or More

A single custodial sentence of 12 months or more, or consecutive sentences totalling 12 months or more, normally means refusal. The guidance says the caseworker must still weigh all relevant factors the person raises against any countervailing evidence of good character or mitigating circumstances that might support an exceptional grant. See our citizenship application guide for the process itself.

A Custodial Sentence of Less Than 12 Months

Refusal is not the default. The caseworker considers, on the balance of probabilities, whether the person is of good character.

Non-Custodial Sentences and Out-of-Court Disposals

A fine, a community order, an absolute or conditional discharge, or a caution recorded on the criminal record is assessed on the same balance-of-probabilities test. The guidance says the more recent or sizeable a fine, and the more recent or numerous the community sentences, the more likely it is that the person will not be considered to be of good character.

How Sentences Are Counted

Sentences served concurrently are not added together: 9 months alongside 6 months is not a sentence of 12 months or more. Sentences served consecutively are added: 9 months followed by 6 months is treated as one 15-month sentence. A suspended sentence is treated as non-custodial unless it is activated because the person re-offended or broke its conditions, in which case the original sentence counts. A very short period of detention measured in days rather than months is normally treated as a non-custodial matter.

Applications Made Before 31 July 2023

Where a decision is still outstanding on an application made before 31 July 2023, the older approach applies: normal refusal for a custodial sentence of at least 4 years; for at least 12 months but under 4 years unless 15 years have passed since the end of the sentence; for under 12 months unless 10 years have passed; and for a non-custodial sentence or out-of-court disposal that occurred in the 3 years before the date of decision.

The Five Grounds for Normal Refusal

Alongside the sentence thresholds, the guidance lists five things that normally mean refusal. A person will normally be refused if they:

• have received a custodial sentence of at least 12 months, in the UK or overseas
• have consecutive sentences totalling at least 12 months, in the UK or overseas
• are a persistent offender who shows a particular disregard for the law
• have committed an offence which has caused serious harm
• have committed a sexual offence, or have their details recorded by the police on a register

The third and fourth of these do not depend on sentence length at all, which is why a run of small matters can weigh more than a single one, and why the nature of an offence can matter even where the sentence was short.

Beyond criminality, the guidance treats deception, financial matters such as bankruptcy fraud, notoriety, and immigration breaches as separate character factors, each with its own section. An application will normally be refused where there has been any deception in the 10 years before the citizenship application.

Traffic and Other Penalties

A fixed penalty notice, a penalty charge notice or a penalty notice for disorder does not form part of a criminal record, and will not normally result in refusal, unless the person failed to pay it or challenged it unsuccessfully and criminal proceedings followed and led to a conviction. In that case the court's sentence is what is assessed. Multiple fixed penalty notices over a short period could, the guidance says, show a disregard for the law.

A fine, by contrast, counts as a criminal conviction and forms part of the record, apart from fiscal fines under Scottish law. All fines have to be declared.

Foreign Convictions

The guidance says an overseas conviction or non-custodial sentence must be treated in the same way as one imposed in the UK, with the sentence imposed as the starting point. It also says an admission of an overseas offence made in another Home Office application, for example in a protection claim, is taken into account, and that a later retraction can itself raise a question about honesty. Some routes ask for a police certificate from a country you have lived in; check what the application in front of you asks for.

There is a specific allowance for conduct that is lawful here. The guidance says it will normally be appropriate to disregard a conviction for behaviour considered legitimate in the UK, and gives homosexuality and trade union membership as its examples. It also says the absence of an equivalent British offence does not by itself mean the matter is disregarded, because a willingness to disobey the law in another country may still be relevant. A decision to disregard an offence has to be approved by the chief caseworker.

What to Declare on Your Application

The guidance sets out what has to be disclosed:

• All convictions, UK and overseas, spent or not. Nationality decisions are exempt from section 4 of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, so past convictions can be taken into account whenever they happened. Someone resident in Northern Ireland is the exception and discloses only unspent convictions, under the rehabilitation periods in the Rehabilitation of Offenders (Northern Ireland) Order 1978
• Unspent cautions, youth cautions and reprimands. For cautions the exemption does not apply, so only unspent ones have to be disclosed
• Any pending criminal proceedings
• Any civil penalty related to immigration, such as a penalty for employing someone with no right to work

Failing to declare a conviction or a pending prosecution, or giving misleading information about one, is considered on the ground of deception as well as on the conviction itself.

Mitigation and Exceptional Grants

The guidance has a section on exceptional grants: cases where an application would normally be refused but mitigating circumstances mean it would be appropriate to grant. It says the caseworker must carefully weigh all known character issues against any countervailing evidence of good character or mitigating circumstances. The examples it gives include a conviction for something with no comparable UK offence; a person in their late sixties whose 2-year custodial sentence was more than 40 years ago with no further offending; and a person who entered illegally 14 years ago but was recognised as a victim of trafficking into the UK and later granted refugee status.

The factors it lists as relevant to a balance-of-probabilities decision include the nature of the offence, any escalation in offending, the time since it happened, the person's age at the time, and any other exceptional or mitigating circumstances. For children, it says sentencing already takes account of age, and discretion may be exercised where a child's offending would otherwise mean a lifetime refusal.

Good character is only one of the requirements. A naturalisation application also has to meet the Life in the UK test and English language requirements, and the residence and absence rules.

Cost and Timing

A naturalisation application costs £1,839 in total: £1,709 to apply and a £130 citizenship ceremony fee. The application fee is not refunded if the application is refused, though the ceremony fee is. Registration as a British citizen costs £1,540 for an adult and £1,000 for a child, in each case with the ceremony fee on top where one applies. Current amounts are in our UK visa fees guide.

A decision usually comes within 6 months. The priority service costs a further £500 and brings the target to 30 working days; the super priority service is not available for citizenship applications.

Multiple Convictions

More than one conviction is treated as a pattern rather than as a list. The guidance names a "persistent offender who shows a particular disregard for the law" as its own ground for normal refusal, independent of sentence length, and says that the more recent or numerous the community sentences, the more likely it is that a person will not be considered to be of good character. Multiple fixed penalty notices over a short period are treated the same way, even though a single one would not be.

The suitability grounds that apply at the settlement stage are a separate test, set out in Part 9 of the Immigration Rules. The nationality criminality thresholds were aligned with the Part 9 ones on 31 July 2023, but they remain separate decisions.

If Your Application Is Refused

There is no statutory right of appeal against a citizenship refusal. Your options are:

• Nationality review. You can ask the Home Office to reconsider the decision. The fee is £513.
• A fresh application. A new application can be made later, at the full fee.
• Judicial review. A challenge in the courts, on grounds such as irrationality or procedural unfairness. This is a court process, and is not the same as administrative review, which is an immigration process and does not apply to nationality decisions.

Rowan sets out what the published rules say; it does not assess anyone's case, and no page here can say what a caseworker will decide about a particular record. Advice on an individual case is regulated, and comes from a solicitor or from an adviser registered with the Immigration Advice Authority, which took over from the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner on 16 January 2025. See our guide to applying alone or with a solicitor and our guide to what happens after a refusal.

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