The continuous period in the UK must be lawful. This means the applicant must have spent the qualifying period here continuously with leave to enter or remain and must not have breached their leave conditions. An example of this would include
by taking employment other than that permitted by their work permit or certificate of sponsorship.
You can only disregard breaks in the period of lawful residence in certain circumstances.
A break in the continuous period may occur just before the ILR application is made or at any point where leave expired during the continuous period claimed. The relevant rules you must apply depend on the Immigration Rules in place at the time
the break occurred.
In most cases a period of overstaying will already have been considered and accepted by the caseworker who handled the previous leave to remain applications and so you must not reconsider this. If the migrant’s leave expired and was then followed by a subsequent grant of entry clearance, the reasons for the delay will not have been assessed,as this was not relevant to the entry clearance decision.
