What to do if forced to overstay in the UK due to illness?

Question

Someone I know, a national of Monaco, has been invited the UK to give a number of guest lectures at the UCL over the course of 29 days.

For this purpose he does not need a visa, with the maximum stay being 1 month.

What would happen, however, in case he were to fall sick just before departure, and thus have to overstay? What action, if any, needs to be taken in order for him to avoid problems next time he wants to visit?

Note that I don't find this likely to happen, but he wants to know just in case.

Answer 1

An answer to this question has been posted by Gayot Fow (who is a former immigration lawyer) on his personal blog:

There are no particular rules making Monegasque citizens unique or deserving of special attention, they are treated like any other non-visa national. Namely, they can give a series of guest lectures at a university for a period of up to one month without a visa. When the month is finished, the person can still remain as a visitor (i.e., without working) up until their permitted 6 month leave-to-enter expires (or whatever term is assigned by the Immigration Officer who lands them). So in this case and assuming the person recovered before their 6 month leave-to-enter expires, nothing would happen.

But what if a visitor is sick and unable to leave at the end of their visit? The official policy is for the person to complete and post an FLR (O) form (application for further leave to remain, other/outside-the-rules) on the grounds of medical illness or poor health. The fee for this application is nearly £1,000 so great care must be taken when filing the application to assure that it is free from errors. The FLR (O) application should be made prior to the expiry of the person’s leave-to-enter and should always be done if the illness is expected to last more than 7 days beyond the person’s visa’s expiry.

There are cases where the expected overstay is very short, for example 1 or 2 days. There are other cases where circumstantial practicalities prevent an FLR (O) application from being lodged at all. Assuming the person has been hospitalised, when they are able to leave the staff will provide them with an NHS Discharge Letter. This has all of the information needed to exonerate an involuntary overstay. It can be shown to the Immigration Officer on departure (if challenged) or included as evidence in the person’s next visa application.

A solicitor should be consulted before selecting either of these routes.

CC BY-SA 3.0. Unchanged.

Answer 2

It is very important to keep in mind that you need to apply for an extension of your visa, or indefinite leave to remain before the expiry of your current visa.

If a person overstay on their current visa, for more than 28 days, they would need to leave the UK and make a new application from their home country.

The implication of this would be that a person would also lose the qualifying period spent on the visa that would have counted towards example indefinite leave to remain. BIC has had unfortunate cases where persons contacted us, after overstaying on their Ancestral Visa, and where they should have been able to apply for indefinite leave to remain, they had to re-apply for the Ancestral visa and re-start the qualifying period towards indefinite leave to remain.

However, if the person can proof that there were exceptional circumstances which prevented them from applying within the 28 days, it will be taken into consideration.

Exceptional circumstances will inter alia include; serious illness that prevented the applicant from submitting the application in time, the loss of documents due to fire or theft, travel or postal delays which meant that the applicant or representative were unable to submit the application on time etc. It is however important to note that proof will be required of such ‘exceptional circumstances’ and it will depend on the individual circumstances.

So if that happen he wouldn't be in trouble.

So what if he wasn't ill and overstayed or they didn't believed in him he'd had to suffer the consequences....

Here are the rules regarding overstaying inter alia include;

If you overstayed for less than 90 days and left the UK voluntarily, not at the expense of the Secretary of State, you will be able to apply for a UK visa. If you overstayed in the UK for more than 90 days, and left the UK voluntarily, not at the expense of the Secretary of State, you will face a ban for one year. If you overstayed in the UK, and was removed at the expense of the Secretary of State, and the date that you was removed was less than 6 months after the date on which you were given notice of the removal decision, or no more than 6 months after the date of which you no longer had a pending appeal, you will face a ban for two years. If you overstayed in the UK, and left voluntarily, at the expense of the Secretary of State, you will face a ban for five years. If you were removed or deported, you will face a ban for 10 years.