Can you bring your parents to the UK after getting ILR? The Adult Dependent Relative route
Yes, once you hold ILR or British citizenship you can sponsor your parents under the Adult Dependent Relative (ADR) route, but it is one of the hardest visas in the UK system. Your parent must need long-term personal care to perform everyday tasks such as washing, dressing and cooking, and that care must be unavailable or unaffordable in their home country, even with your financial help. The Home Office's own review found that only 145 of 2,330 applications made in the first two and a half years of the current rules were granted at initial decision, roughly 6 per cent.
- Sponsors must be British citizens or settled in the UK (ILR or settled status); the applicant applies from outside the UK
- Application fee: £3,635 for settlement entry clearance as an other dependant relative from 8 April 2026
- Core test: long-term personal care needs that cannot be met in the home country, even with the sponsor's money
- Around 6 per cent of applications succeeded at initial decision in 2012–2014; most later grants came through appeals
- If the sponsor is British or settled, a successful parent is granted indefinite leave to enter immediately
Who can sponsor and which relatives qualify
The route sits in Appendix Adult Dependent Relative of the Immigration Rules. Under paragraph ADR 4.2 the sponsor must be a British citizen, a person settled in the UK, someone with protection status, or certain EEA nationals with pre-settled status. So the moment your ILR is granted, you technically qualify as a sponsor.
ILR and citizenship both need the Life in the UK test — see how you'd score on a free mock test, no sign-up needed.
Eligible applicants under ADR 4.1 are the sponsor's parent, grandparent, son, daughter, brother or sister, aged 18 or over. Applications must be made from outside the UK; a parent visiting you cannot switch into the route from within the country. If both parents apply together, the healthier one must be genuinely unable to care for the other.
Unlike partners and children on work routes, parents have no general dependant route. There is no option to sponsor a parent simply because they are elderly, lonely or financially dependent; that route closed in July 2012.
The care test that defeats most applications
Two requirements do almost all of the damage. First, under ADR 5.1 your parent must, as a result of age, illness or disability, require long-term personal care to perform everyday tasks. Home Office guidance is explicit: they must be incapable of washing, dressing or cooking for themselves. Frailty, forgetfulness or needing help with cleaning is not enough.
Second, under ADR 5.2 they must be unable to obtain the required level of care in the country where they live, even with your practical and financial help, either because it is not available and no one there can reasonably provide it, or because it is not affordable. Caseworkers are told to consider whether any relative, friend, neighbour, home help, nurse, paid carer or care home could meet the need. If the required care is available or affordable locally, the guidance instructs caseworkers to refuse.
The route contains a painful paradox: your own money can sink the application. The Home Office guidance gives the example of an 85-year-old in Pakistan whose UK-based son pays for a daily carer to help him wash, dress and cook. That application fails precisely because the sponsor can arrange care at home. Demonstrating that you can fund care abroad is treated as proof your parent does not need to come.
The evidence you would need
Successful applications are built on independent evidence, not personal statements. Expect to provide medical evidence from a doctor or other health professional confirming your parent cannot perform everyday tasks, plus evidence from a central or local health authority, a local authority or a doctor in their country showing the required care is not available there. If care has been paid for previously, caseworkers will ask for payment records and an explanation of why the arrangement cannot continue.
As sponsor, you must also sign a five-year undertaking to maintain, accommodate and care for your parent without recourse to public funds, evidenced under Appendix FM-SE. The £3,635 fee comes on top of what you already paid for your own ILR, and it is not refunded on refusal.
Refusal rates: the honest picture
Before the 2012 reform, around 2,325 dependent relatives were granted settlement in a single year. The Home Office's 2016 review of the current rules found 2,330 applications between July 2012 and December 2014, with 491 eventual grants, but only 145 of those at initial decision. Most successes came through appeals. Including appeal outcomes, around 19 per cent of applications succeeded in 2013–2014 and around 11 per cent in 2015. The Court of Appeal upheld the lawfulness of the rules in the Britcits case in 2017, so challenging the policy itself is not realistic.
The practical advice: treat refusal as the default outcome, get specialist immigration advice before spending the fee, and prepare evidence that confronts every alternative care option; caseworkers will assume local care exists unless you prove otherwise.
Visitor visas and their limits
For most families the realistic option is visits. A Standard Visitor visa costs £135 and allows stays of up to 6 months. Long-term visit visas cost £506 for 2 years, £903 for 5 years and £1,128 for 10 years, but each individual stay is still capped at 6 months, and the rules prohibit living in the UK through frequent or successive visits. A parent who effectively makes the UK their home on repeat visits risks refusal at the border. Visitors cannot claim public funds and have no path to settlement, so visiting is a way to stay close, not a back door to permanent residence.