The ILR 180-Day Rule: How Absences Are Counted for UK Settlement (2026)

Every route to settling in the UK runs through the same arithmetic: the continuous residence requirement, which for most work and family routes means keeping absences from the UK below 180 days in any rolling 12-month period throughout the qualifying years (GOV.UK, Indefinite leave to remain; the detailed rules sit in Appendix Continuous Residence of the Immigration Rules). Unlike the tax rules we usually write about, this is a minimum-presence count: the days you must protect are the ones spent in Britain. Updated 10 August 2026.

Rolling, not annual

The modern rule is assessed on any 12-month window, not calendar years or visa years. That is the same mechanic as the Schengen 90/180 rule, pointed the other way: every new day, an old day drops out of the window, and a heavy travel pattern that never breaches 180 in a single visa year can still breach it in some window straddling two. People who tot up absences per year are computing the wrong number.

What counts, and the traps

• Whole absences count, whatever the reason: holidays, business trips, family emergencies. Limited exceptions exist (serious illness, certain postings and, historically, pandemic concessions), and they are exceptions to argue with evidence, not assumptions.
• The count runs across your whole qualifying period, typically five years. One bad window years ago can surface at application time.
• Travel days: in practice absences are generally counted in whole days between departure and arrival; keep the underlying dates so the computation can be shown either way.
• Breaching the limit usually means the continuous-residence clock restarts, which for someone four years into a five-year route is a catastrophic outcome discovered at the worst moment.

After ILR: the next count starts

Settlement is not the end of counting. ILR itself can lapse after two continuous years outside the UK, and naturalisation brings its own limits, covered in our companion guide to the 450-day citizenship rule. And UK tax residence runs on an entirely separate machine, the SRT, which can matter in the same years.

Track it as a rolling window, because it is one

The Days Monitor iPhone app was built around rolling-window day counts: set a custom rule of at most 179 absence days in any 365 (tracked via your days outside the UK), see the live window as you travel, and get warned before a planned trip breaches it. The exported day-by-day record doubles as the evidence for the application form's absence tables. Download it on the App Store.

Sources

• GOV.UK, Indefinite leave to remain (accessed 10 August 2026)
• Immigration Rules, Appendix Continuous Residence (accessed 10 August 2026)

This article is general information, not legal, tax or immigration advice. Immigration rules change frequently and are applied to individual facts; verify current requirements with the official sources linked above and take advice from a qualified professional before making decisions.