For two decades, the deal for most people who moved to Britain on a long-term visa was simple: five years on the route, then indefinite leave to remain, the permanent status the Home Office calls settlement. On 2 November 2026 the government confirmed that this deal is ending.
That day the Home Office published A Fairer Pathway to Settlement: Government response to the consultation, Command Paper CP 1707, and the Home Secretary made a statement to the House of Commons. The consultation page sums up the outcome in one line: "The starting point for settlement will increase from 5 to 10 years."
The detail matters more than the headline. The final framework is not a flat ten years. It is a scale, from three years to twenty, set by earnings, occupation, family connection and compliance. And it is not yet law.
The four paths
Table 1 of the response sets out four standard pathways:
| Path | Who it is for | Main condition |
|---|---|---|
| 3 years | "Exceptional economic contribution" | Earnings of at least £125,141 in 3 of the last 4 years, or the highest talent group |
| 5 years | Higher earners, specified public service workers, British connection | Earnings of at least £50,271 in 3 of the last 5 years; or 5 years in an eligible health or education occupation; or a recognised British connection |
| 10 years | The default | Earnings of at least £12,571 in 5 of the previous 7 years |
| 20 years | People with a qualifying immigration breach or recent use of public funds | The mandatory requirements |
The earnings thresholds are not arbitrary. They are the points at which the UK's income tax bands change: £12,571 is where basic rate starts, £50,271 is where higher rate starts and £125,141 is where additional rate starts. The response says the thresholds will remain linked to the income tax thresholds and move with them.
The government calls its method a "best years" approach. Someone on the three-year path may have one year below the line in the last four; someone on the five-year path, two years below the line in the last five; someone on the ten-year path, two years below the line in the last seven. The response gives the example of a worker who takes two years of maternity leave and still meets the ten-year test.
Who counts as high talent
The three-year path is also open through the highest talent group. The response lists high talent permission as the Skilled Worker, Global Talent, Scale-up, Innovator Founder and International Sportsperson routes, and adds that anyone applying on the three or five-year path as a Global Talent or Innovator Founder migrant must hold that permission at the time of the most recent grant. A footnote marks the highest talent group as "subject to review pending MAC report", the Migration Advisory Committee's advice. That part is not settled.
The conditions no salary can buy
Every applicant, on every path, must meet five mandatory requirements. The response is explicit that they "cannot be offset by higher earnings, public service or other positive contributions":
- Good character and suitability, including a much stricter criminality rule. Under current rules, a custodial or suspended sentence of 12 months or more leads to mandatory refusal. Under earned settlement, any adult with a criminal record in the UK will be refused, which the response defines to include court fines, cautions, conditional discharges and community sentences. Overseas convictions also lead to refusal where the conduct would be a crime in the UK, with discretion where legal systems differ.
- No outstanding government debt, defined to include NHS debt, unpaid tax, National Insurance contributions and litigation debt owed to the Home Office.
- English at B2, the level the response compares to an A level in a foreign language.
- The Life in the UK test, which the government is also reviewing.
- Sustained contribution: at least £12,571 a year for three years, with exemptions for children, people aged 65 and over, and people who cannot work because of a physical or mental condition.
The English rule is the one that is already partly in force. The explanatory memorandum to HC 1691 raised the settlement requirement from B1 to B2 for Skilled Worker, Global Talent and other routes, with effect from 26 March 2027, and states that it applies to people already on a pathway. The Brief covered that change in HC 584 and the Settlement Question.
Time that no longer counts
The second big change is quieter. Under current rules, a person can settle through the Long Residence route after ten years of continuous lawful residence, and almost any lawful time counts, including years as a student or on the Graduate route. The response confirms that the Long Residence route will close.
Under earned settlement, only time on routes designed to lead to permanent residence counts. The response lists the routes that will not count towards settlement:
- Visitor, Student and Graduate;
- Global Business Mobility and the Temporary Worker routes;
- Youth Mobility, Seasonal Worker and High Potential Individual;
- the Ukraine schemes, and leave outside the rules, on which the government will set out its approach separately.
For internationally mobile professionals the practical consequence is sharp. Years spent studying in Britain, or on a Graduate visa before a Skilled Worker job, will no longer build towards settlement. The clock starts on the qualifying route.
Time also cannot be mixed across fundamentally different routes. Protection and human-rights routes cannot be combined with work or family routes; the clock restarts when someone moves between them.
Who keeps a shorter path
The response keeps existing arrangements for several groups, while still applying the stricter criminality and English rules unless an exemption applies:
- Hong Kong BN(O) status holders keep settlement after five years.
- HM Armed Forces personnel keep their existing arrangements.
- British connection: partners, parents and children of British citizens, and Commonwealth citizens on the UK Ancestry route through a UK-born grandparent, keep a five-year path.
- Workers in specified health and education occupations paid on national pay scales, such as doctors, nurses and teachers, get a permanent five-year path; Annex C of the response lists the occupations.
There are also one-off transitional arrangements. Care workers who entered or switched into the route before the May 2025 Immigration White Paper keep a five-year path if they meet the route's requirements, including a salary of £25,000 a year. Those who do not can apply for a further five-year Health and Care visa. Lower-skilled health and education workers who arrived before the White Paper also keep five years. Workers who joined the Skilled Worker route before April 2024 under the old salary thresholds will be able to extend on their current terms until 2035.
Two points from the government's news release settle questions people ask most often. Settled status "will never be removed from anyone who already holds it". And, apart from the transitional groups, "Settlement rules will otherwise continue to apply at the point of application". In plain terms: the rules on the day you apply decide your case, not the rules on the day you arrived.
Families and public funds
The final framework is less individual than the one consulted on. A partner who arrives with the main applicant can settle at the same time if they meet the requirements, and a couple can meet the contribution test together through a household income threshold of £25,142, twice the individual figure. Children under 18 settle with their parents and are exempt from the income, debt, English and Life in the UK requirements. Young adults aged 18 to 24 who keep child-dependant status can settle with the family without meeting the earnings test; from 25, they must qualify in their own right.
On public funds, applicants on the three, five and ten-year paths must not have received specified public funds in the five years before applying. Anyone who has must either complete a fresh five-year period without them or wait until 20 years on a qualifying route.
What is not decided
The response sets direction, not a date. Its next steps are clear about that: the government will "translate the framework into detailed rules and operational arrangements" and, before implementation, publish further technical guidance and a full impact assessment.
That matters because settlement periods live in the Immigration Rules, which change through Statements of Changes laid before Parliament. The Home Office's collection of statements for 2026 was last updated on 3 September 2026, with HC 584; no statement implementing earned settlement had been laid when the response was published. Until one is, today's route rules govern applications made today.
The government's own estimate of the effect is large. Annex A of the response says that, between 2026 and 2030, over 500,000 people will become eligible to settle later than under current arrangements, lowering the central estimate of settlement grants in that period from 1.9 million to 1.4 million. The consultation drew 204,667 responses.
What it means for the road to a British passport
Settlement is not citizenship, but it is the gate to it. Naturalisation under Schedule 1 of the British Nationality Act 1981 requires, among other things, five years' residence with no more than 450 days' absence, no more than 90 days' absence in the final twelve months, and freedom from any time limit on stay throughout those final twelve months. In practice that means holding settlement for at least a year before applying, unless an exception applies.
Pushing settlement from five to ten years therefore pushes the earliest British passport from about six years to about eleven for everyone on the default path. For a high earner on the three-year path, settlement comes sooner than today, but the Act's own five-year residence requirement still applies, so the earliest passport moves from about six years to about five, not to four.
The UK now fits the wider pattern The Brief described in Time Is the New Price of a Passport. The difference is that Britain has made the clock depend on income in a way few European countries have.
Who should act, and how
- Skilled workers on the five-year path today should check their last five years of earnings against £50,271. Someone above it in three of those years stays on five years; someone below it moves to ten, once the rules change.
- High earners and founders considering Britain should look at the three-year path closely. For someone earning above £125,141, Britain may become one of the faster routes to permanent residence in Europe. The tax position for new arrivals is a separate question, set out in London After the Non-Dom Era.
- Students and Graduate visa holders should assume their current years will not count, and plan the switch to a qualifying route as early as possible.
- Everyone should get to B2 English and keep tax, NHS and National Insurance records spotless. Those conditions apply on every path, and the B2 rule arrives on 26 March 2027 regardless of the rest. The Brief's guide to language requirements for residency and citizenship puts B2 in context.
The wider UK picture, from tax to residence routes, is on the United Kingdom country page.
Work with Sebastian
If you are living in Britain on a visa, or weighing a move there, and want to know which settlement path your income, your route and your family will actually put you on, that is the kind of cross-border planning Sebastian works on with internationally mobile clients. Book a consultation.
