Days outside the UK: the 180-day rule

What the Rule Says

The rule is in Appendix Continuous Residence of the Immigration Rules. Paragraph CR 3.1 says the applicant “must not have been outside the UK for more than 180 days in any 12-month period”.

The wording matters. It is not “180 days a year” and it is not tied to the calendar. It is any 12-month period inside the qualifying period. The current settlement requirements are on the GOV.UK indefinite leave to remain page.

How Days Are Counted

Home Office continuous residence guidance is specific: only whole days of absence are counted, and the dates of departure and arrival are not counted as absences.

So a trip leaving the UK on 1 March and landing back on 10 March is 8 days of absence, not 10 and not 9. A trip out and back on the same day is 0 days, because neither the departure date nor the arrival date counts.

Beyond that, the reason for the trip makes no difference. Holidays, family visits and work trips are all counted the same way.

Rolling, or Consecutive

Which permission you held changes how the 12-month periods are cut:

• Permission granted on or after 11 January 2018. Absences are considered on a rolling basis over any 12-month period. Every possible 12-month window has to stay at or below 180 days.
• Permission granted before 11 January 2018. Absences during that older permission are considered in consecutive 12-month periods ending on the date of the application, so the windows are fixed rather than sliding.

The rolling version is the one that catches people, because two trips in different calendar years can fall inside the same window. Say you were away for 100 days from November 2024 to February 2025, and 90 days from May to August 2025. Neither calendar year exceeds 180 days, but the 12 months from November 2024 to November 2025 contain 190 days.

When the Qualifying Period Is Measured From

Paragraph CR 1.3 says the qualifying period is calculated by counting back from whichever date is most beneficial to the applicant: the date of application, a date up to 28 days after the date of application, or the date of decision. This is also why an application can be made up to 28 days before the qualifying period is complete.

Absences That Do Not Count

Paragraph CR 3.4 sets out a closed list of absences that are not counted towards the 180 days. In summary, they are:

• Assisting with a national or international humanitarian or environmental crisis overseas.
• Travel disruption caused by a natural disaster, military conflict or pandemic.
• Compelling and compassionate personal circumstances, such as the life-threatening illness or death of the applicant or a close family member.
• Research activity approved for certain Skilled Worker and Global Talent applicants.
• Work, study or supporting family, for applicants on the settlement family life route.
• Accompanying a partner on Crown service abroad, and certain pre-June 2022 absences on the settlement family life route.

The list is closed. Ordinary business travel is not on it, however much of it the job requires and whoever asked for it. A letter from an employer explaining work absences does not change the count.

Keeping the Count

The reliable method is a record kept as you go, not reconstructed afterwards:

1. List every trip with its departure date and its arrival back date.
2. Count the whole days between them, excluding both of those dates.
3. For each trip, add up the absences in the 12 months ending on the day you came back. Those windows, the ones that end just after a long trip, are the ones most likely to go over 180.

Passport stamps have become an unreliable record since travel became largely digital, so keep boarding passes, tickets and calendar entries. Our continuous residence guide covers the wider requirement.

What Breaks Continuous Residence

Paragraph CR 4.1 lists what breaks a continuous period. An absence over the limit that does not meet one of the CR 3.4 exceptions is one of them. The others include:

• Imprisonment, unless the sentence was suspended.
• A deportation order, exclusion order or removal directions.
• Being in the UK without the required permission, subject to narrow exceptions in the rules.
• Leaving the UK voluntarily after a refused application, once permission has expired.

Where continuous residence is broken, a fresh continuous period has to be built. What matters is that the exceptions are a list in the rules, not a general discretion to be argued for.

Settlement and Citizenship Count Differently

• Settlement: no more than 180 days outside the UK in any 12-month period.
• Citizenship after settlement: no more than 450 days outside the UK in the 5 years before the application, and no more than 90 days in the last 12 months.
• Citizenship as the spouse of a British citizen: no more than 270 days outside the UK in the 3 years before the application, and no more than 90 days in the last 12 months.

These are separate tests applied at separate stages. Meeting one says nothing about the other. See our citizenship absences guide.

If the Limit Has Already Been Exceeded

The published position is narrow. Either the absence falls inside one of the CR 3.4 exceptions, in which case it does not count towards the 180 days, or it does not, in which case CR 4.1 treats continuous residence as broken and a new qualifying period runs from the point residence resumed.

Only a person regulated by the Immigration Advice Authority or a solicitor can advise on whether an exception applies to an individual case. See our guide to solicitor costs.

Related reading: the settlement guide, the Life in the UK test guide, the English language guide, the eVisa guide, the fees guide and the visa refusal guide.

Questions and answers