Does a gap in your visa break the Skilled Worker ILR clock?
A gap in your leave with no valid visa almost always breaks continuous residence, so your 5-year Skilled Worker settlement clock restarts from your new grant — and the earlier 4.5 years generally cannot be carried over to the work route. This is different from time spent abroad on a valid visa, which is measured separately. The 10-year long residence route works differently and may be worth exploring, but its allowances for gaps are very limited.
- Skilled Worker ILR needs 5 years of continuous, lawful residence on qualifying routes.
- A gap where you needed permission and did not have it breaks continuous residence.
- After a break, the 5-year clock restarts from the new grant — earlier time does not carry over.
- The 10-year long residence route counts continuous lawful residence and can sometimes overlook a short gap, but the limits are tight.
Why a gap in leave is different from time abroad
There are two separate things people often mix up. Absences are days you spend outside the UK while you still hold a valid visa — the rule there is no more than 180 days outside the UK in any rolling 12-month period. A break in lawful leave is something else entirely: a period inside the UK (or anywhere) when you had no valid permission at all.
The Home Office continuous residence guidance is clear that for time to count, you must be lawfully present. It states that an applicant is not lawfully present "where the applicant required permission and did not have it" and none of the narrow overstaying exceptions apply. A gap with no visa is exactly that situation.
What a gap does to the 5-year Skilled Worker clock
The Skilled Worker settlement route requires five years of continuous residence with permission on the Skilled Worker route (or a combination of qualifying work routes). The word "continuous" is doing a lot of work here.
When a gap in leave breaks that continuity, the period before the break stops counting toward the five years. You then build a fresh qualifying period from your new grant of permission. So in your case, the 4.5 years on the previous Skilled Worker (healthcare) visa generally cannot be stitched onto the new visa for the five-year work route. The clock reset you already suspected is, unfortunately, the usual outcome.
Is the 6-month gap covered by any exception?
This is the only realistic place to look for relief — and the news is sobering. The main exception (paragraph 39E) is narrow. It generally expects you to have made a fresh application within 14 days of your previous permission expiring, with a good reason beyond your control. Before 24 November 2016 a more generous 28-day rule applied. Even then, the overstaying period itself never counts as lawful residence.
A six-month gap sits far outside these windows, so it would almost certainly be treated as a break rather than disregarded. But the exact dates, reasons and any application you made matter enormously. This is high-stakes — get a regulated immigration adviser (OISC-registered or a solicitor) to check your specific history before you rely on any outcome.
Where the 10-year long residence route fits in
There is a genuinely different path worth understanding. The 10-year long residence route counts 10 years of continuous lawful residence in the UK — and crucially, it can be built from time on different visa types, not just work visas. So lawful years you spent before the gap are not automatically wasted; they may still count toward a long residence clock if you can build the full ten years of lawful presence.
The catch is the same: a gap in lawful status generally breaks long residence too. There are narrow allowances for short periods of overstaying that can be disregarded, but those windows are tight (the 14-day rule, or the pre-2016 28-day rule), and a six-month gap will usually fall outside them. Disregarded overstaying does not break continuity but also does not count toward the ten years.
So the honest position is: the 10-year route may eventually be open to you, but a long gap can still break the chain. Whether your earlier time helps depends on the precise dates.
What to do next
Gather your exact visa dates, the start and end of the gap, and details of any application you made during it. Then speak to a regulated adviser who can map both the 5-year and 10-year routes against your real history — only they can tell you whether any earlier time survives.
While you plan the legal side, keep your Life in the UK test ready, since you will need it for settlement on either route. You can practise free with the BritPass question banks and check your knowledge before booking. For a fuller overview of the application itself, see the ILR guide.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Immigration rules change and individual cases turn on their facts — always confirm your position with a regulated immigration adviser.