Applying for leave to remain in the UK with a criminal record

Yes. Applications for leave to remain are exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (ROA). This means that you must declare all police cautions on your application, even if they are spent. Declaring a police caution will not necessarily bar you from being granted leave to remain (see here for more details), but failure to disclose may be seen as an attempt to deceive UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI).

Yes. Applications for leave to remain are exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (ROA). This means that you must declare all convictions on your application, even if they are spent. Declaring a conviction will not necessarily bar you from being granted leave to remain (see here for more details), but failure to disclose may be seen as an attempt to deceive UK Visas and Immigration.

Yes. If you have been convicted under court martial or during other military proceedings, you will need to declare this on your application. For further guidance on how such matters are considered by UK Visas and Immigration, please see here.

Yes. Overseas convictions will usually be treated as if they happened in the UK. UK Visas and Immigration will use the sentence that you received as a starting point when deciding whether the conviction will impact on their decision to grant you leave to remain in the UK.

Not necessarily. You must disclose your full criminal record when applying for leave to remain. If you have been convicted of an offence and were sentence to four years imprisonment or longer, your application is likely to be refused. If you were sentenced to anything less than four years, or given a non-custodial sentence, your application will be refused until a certain period has elapsed:

A suspended prison sentence is treated as a non-custodial sentence, unless the prison sentence has been ‘activated’ during the period of suspension. You can find this information in the Home Office document : General grounds for refusal: considering leave to remain.

If you are not sure what you need to disclose when applying for leave to remain, you can contact Nacro’s Criminal Record Support Service on 0300 123 1999.

For general advice about your application, you can contact the UK Visa and Immigration contact centre on 0300 123 2241.