Ask ten people what the UK family visa financial requirement is and nine will say £29,000. They are right, and it is the least useful part of the answer. That figure has not moved since 11 April 2024. Almost everything around it has. Fees went up in April. A higher English standard at settlement was written into the Rules in March. The family Appendix was amended again at the start of August. A reform that would rewrite how settlement is earned closed its consultation in February and is still sitting on a minister’s desk. And the threshold itself remains under a formal review that could send it in either direction. What follows is what actually changed, what held firm, and how to turn all of it into an evidence pack that survives an unsympathetic read.
What moved this year, and what stood still
Two things are true at once. The headline number is exactly where it was eighteen months ago, and the route around it has been rearranged several times over. Families working from a guide written in 2024 tend to get a surprise at the payment screen, or at the moment somebody asks which version of the Rules their application falls under.
The threshold held at £29,000 while the review stayed open
The requirement rose from £18,600 to £29,000 on 11 April 2024. The government of the day had planned two further steps, to roughly £34,500 and then to £38,700, the second matching the Skilled Worker salary floor. Neither step was ever written into the Immigration Rules.
In July 2024 the incoming Home Secretary froze the figure and asked the Migration Advisory Committee to examine the whole financial framework for family migration. The Committee reported on 10 June 2025 and pointedly declined to name a single number, on the view that this is a political judgement rather than a technical one. It set out a spread of defensible options instead, each anchored to a different yardstick — around £15,100 following the benefit cap, about £17,000 at the relative poverty line, roughly £23,500 at the Universal Credit cut-off, £23,800 at the minimum wage, £24,900 at the Real Living Wage and £28,000 at the Minimum Income Standard. It also rejected pegging family migration to Skilled Worker pay, calling that benchmark unrelated to the family route and the option most likely to collide with international law.
Ministers have not chosen from that list. Written answers through the end of 2025 and into this year have repeated the same short formula — the financial requirements of the family Immigration Rules remain under review. Nothing has been laid before Parliament, and the caseworker guidance on the minimum income requirement still carries its November 2025 version stamp.
The changes that did land
Fees rose on 8 April 2026 by six to seven per cent across almost the whole schedule. Entry clearance for a partner moved to £2,064 and the in-country extension to £1,407. Settlement went to £3,226 per person. The Immigration Health Surcharge did not move and remains £1,035 per person per year, which matters more than the fee rise does, because on a first grant the surcharge is the larger of the two payments.
On 5 March 2026 a statement of changes wrote a higher English standard at settlement into the Rules across a long list of appendices, Appendix Settlement Family Life among them. From 26 March 2027 the level required at settlement rises from B1 to B2. That is far enough away to plan around and close enough to matter to anyone beginning a five-year route now.
A further statement of changes took effect on 30 July and 3 August 2026. It touched Appendix FM without touching the money. The child route under Appendix FM now carries the care requirement borrowed from Appendix Children, so an application including a child has to evidence living and care arrangements in the UK that comply with domestic law. And a partner sponsored by someone holding protection status will normally be granted permission expiring on the same date as the sponsor’s own grant, which since 2 March 2026 has been issued in thirty-month blocks rather than five-year ones.
The reform that is still only a proposal
Earned settlement is the one to watch. The government published its model in November 2025 and consulted until 12 February 2026, drawing more than two hundred thousand responses. The design would raise the baseline qualifying period for settlement to ten years and then subtract time for particular attributes.
Partners, parents and children of British citizens appear in the consultation table with a five-year reduction, which returns them to the familiar five-year route. That is a proposal, not a rule. As matters stand the five-year and ten-year routes operate exactly as they always have, and the Home Secretary has signalled that finalised rules are more likely late in the year than early. Anyone who has been told their settlement date has already been pushed back has been misinformed.
Two thresholds run in parallel, and your start date decides which
This is where avoidable damage happens. There is no single family visa income figure in force. There are two, and which one applies to you was fixed by something you did years ago rather than by anything you can change now.
The flat £29,000 for the post-April-2024 route
If your first application as a partner, fiancé or proposed civil partner was made on or after 11 April 2024, the figure is £29,000 a year gross. It is flat. It does not rise because you are bringing one child or three, because the increase folded the old child element into the headline number.
That point is worth labouring, because a surprising number of guides still add £3,800 for a first child on top of £29,000. Run that arithmetic and you will believe you need £32,800 when you need £29,000, which is enough to talk a family out of an application they could already make. A child who is British or already settled sits outside the calculation in any event.
The protected £18,600 route and its child amounts
If your first successful application on the five-year partner route was made before 11 April 2024, and you are extending or settling with the same partner, the older structure survives. That is £18,600 as the base, plus £3,800 for a first dependent child and £2,400 for each further child, with the whole total capped at £29,000.
The protection is generous and it is fragile. It attaches to the route and to the relationship, not to the person. Change partner and you start again at £29,000. Lose continuous leave, or move across to the ten-year human rights route, and the protection usually goes with it.
We have the same conversation regularly. A sponsor earning £24,000 assumes they are short, then discovers they are on the protected figure with one child and therefore need £22,400, and realises they have quietly met the requirement for the past two years.
How people lose a protected threshold without noticing
A gap in leave is the usual culprit. So is a spell on a different route while a refusal is challenged. So is a new partner after a relationship ends.
The safest habit here is documentary. Keep the original grant letter from the first partner application, keep every grant since, and keep them somewhere you can lay hands on in ten minutes. When a caseworker has to decide which threshold applies to you, that paper trail is what settles it. A first spouse visa granted in early 2024 is, in practical terms, an asset worth £10,400 a year in earnings you never have to prove.
Whose income counts, and at which stage
The rules here are asymmetric by design, and the asymmetry catches out couples who have already been living together abroad for years and assume their household income is the relevant figure.
Entry clearance rests on the sponsor alone
While the applicant is outside the UK, only the UK-based sponsor’s employment and self-employment income counts. A partner on a strong salary in Dubai or Toronto contributes nothing to the calculation. A confirmed job offer waiting for them in Manchester contributes nothing either.
Two things do cross the border. Cash savings can be held by either partner or jointly. Certain non-employment income, rent from a property being the common example, can also come from either side. Past that, the sponsor carries the whole weight.
Extension and settlement widen the field
Once the applicant is in the UK with permission to work, their earnings join the pot. At the extension after thirty months, and again at settlement after five years, the £29,000 can be met by the sponsor, by the applicant, or by the two of them combined.
That shift explains why a household that scraped through the first application often has room to spare by the second. It also explains why the requirement is easy to underestimate at the start and easy to forget in the middle. It has to be satisfied three separate times, not once.
If you want a firm date for that third occasion before you start planning your finances around it, you can check how soon you qualify for ILR and work backwards from there.
Sponsors returning to the UK from abroad
A British sponsor coming home with their partner sits in a category of its own. They need a verifiable job offer or a signed contract for work starting within three months of their return, at a salary that meets the requirement alone or alongside other permitted sources.
On top of that they must show one of two histories. Either employment overseas at the required level continuously for at least the previous six months, or receipt of the required level of income across the previous twelve months from salaried work and other permitted sources.
Sponsors returning to a graduate-level offer usually clear this comfortably. Sponsors returning to look for work generally do not, however strong the prospects are on paper. It is one of the few places in the family Rules where the order in which you do things determines the outcome.
The income categories, and where applications come apart
Appendix FM-SE sorts permitted income into lettered categories, each with its own assessment window and its own document list. Most refusals on financial grounds are not about the amount at all. They are about a category being used incorrectly, or evidenced for the wrong period, by someone who earned plenty.
Salaried and non-salaried employment
Category A covers a sponsor who has been with the same employer for at least six months at the date of application. The gross annual salary is taken at face value, supported by six months of payslips, six months of bank statements showing those exact payments arriving, and an employer letter confirming the role, the length of service and the gross annual figure.
Category B is for a sponsor employed for less than six months, or whose pay varies. It has to be satisfied twice over. The current annual salary must meet the requirement, and the actual gross income received over the previous twelve months from employment and other permitted sources must meet it as well. Both halves. Not one.
The two categories cannot be combined. A sponsor who changed jobs four months ago cannot bolt the old salary onto the new one and present it as a year.
Self-employment and company directors
Categories F and G handle sole traders, business partners, franchisees and directors of specified limited companies. Category F uses the most recent complete financial year. Category G averages the last two, which helps where one year was weak and the other strong.
What counts is net profit rather than turnover, and the evidence list runs long — the SA302 tax calculation, the tax year overview from HMRC, annual accounts, personal and business bank statements, and for company directors a further set of corporate documents on top.
There is a restriction here that surprises almost everyone. Cash savings cannot be used to top up self-employment or company-director income. The two sit on different clocks and the Rules do not permit them to be added together. The Migration Advisory Committee recommended lifting that restriction in its review. It has not been lifted.
Non-employment income and pensions
Category C takes rent, dividends from companies outside the family-business definition, investment interest and maintenance payments made under a court order. The window is twelve months and the paperwork has to match the income precisely — title deeds and a tenancy agreement for rent, dividend vouchers for dividends, the order itself for maintenance.
Category E is pension income, UK or overseas. It is the most forgiving category in the appendix. The pension must have become payable at least twenty-eight days before the date of application, and after that a provider letter and bank statements will normally carry it.
What the Home Office will not count
Discretionary bonuses. Commission that is not guaranteed. Overtime that is neither contractual nor consistent. Tips. Expense reimbursements. A promise of support from a parent or sibling. The applicant’s overseas salary at the entry clearance stage. A job offer the applicant has already been given in the UK.
Some of these can be revived where a refusal would breach Article 8, which we come to below. Under the standard Rules they simply sit outside the calculation, and a sponsor whose basic pay is £26,000 with £6,000 of variable earnings stacked on top is a sponsor who has not met the requirement.
Savings, and the arithmetic worth getting right
Cash savings are the second road to the threshold, and the formula behind them is unusual enough that people either overestimate what they need by a wide margin or start the clock far too late.
The formula at entry clearance and extension
The first £16,000 of savings is disregarded, on the reasoning that a household can hold that much and still qualify for income-related benefits. Anything above £16,000 is divided by 2.5, and the result is added to income.
Savings on their own therefore mean £88,500 at the £29,000 threshold, or £62,500 on the protected £18,600 figure. Where savings are topping up a shortfall, take the gap, multiply it by 2.5 and add £16,000. A sponsor on £24,000 has a gap of £5,000 and needs £28,500. A sponsor on £27,500 has a gap of £1,500 and needs £19,750.
Round up rather than down, and leave yourself a margin. Savings are effectively judged at their lowest point across the qualifying period, so a balance that dips for a single day undoes the calculation you built on it.
Why settlement is far cheaper in savings terms
At the settlement stage the divisor disappears. Cash savings above £16,000 count in full towards the requirement instead of being divided by 2.5.
That turns £88,500 into £45,000 at the £29,000 threshold, and into £34,600 on the protected route. Families who have sold a property, received an inheritance or built a house deposit are frequently much closer to settlement on savings alone than they believe, and it is a point general guides rarely make.
The six-month clock and where the money comes from
The funds must have been under the control of the applicant, the sponsor or both for the six months immediately preceding the application date, held in a regulated financial institution, and available to withdraw. A fixed-term product you cannot break does not qualify.
The money may be a gift. A parent transferring £40,000 to help is entirely acceptable, provided the transfer lands more than six months before you apply and you can declare and evidence where it came from. Funds released by a recent sale of property or investments are treated more flexibly under a specific provision, again with proof of the sale.
Plan on seven months rather than six. The statements have to cover the full period ending shortly before submission, and waiting on a bank to produce them is exactly the sort of thing that costs a fortnight.
Expert note from the LawSentis immigration team
The refusals we are asked to repair are almost never about money. They are about a payslip dated three days outside the window. An employer letter quoting a salary the payslips do not support, because a pay rise landed in month five. A run of bank statements missing one month in the middle. A savings balance that dipped below the figure relied on for two days in February. In each case the sponsor earned enough throughout, and the evidence failed to say so in the format Appendix FM-SE demands. Build the pack against the appendix line by line. Then read it a second time as though you were being paid to find a reason to refuse it. That second reading is where most of the value sits.
When the threshold does not apply at all
Three groups sit outside the £29,000 calculation entirely. A sponsor who belongs to one of them and does not realise it can spend years believing the route is shut when it is open.
Disability and carer benefits
Where the sponsor receives Carer’s Allowance or one of a list of disability-related benefits, the minimum income requirement does not apply. The list covers Personal Independence Payment, Disability Living Allowance, Attendance Allowance, Severe Disablement Allowance, Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit, Armed Forces Independence Payment, certain War Pension payments, a police injury pension, and the Scottish equivalents including Adult Disability Payment, Child Disability Payment and Carer Support Payment.
What applies instead is the adequate maintenance test. In outline, the household’s net weekly income after housing costs has to be at or above what a British family of the same size would receive on income support. It is a lower bar than £29,000 in most cases. It is also a different exercise rather than a softer version of the same one, with its own calculation and its own evidence.
Armed forces sponsors
A sponsor serving in HM Armed Forces is assessed against £23,496 rather than £29,000, a figure originally set to match a starting service salary. Partners of service personnel also receive a five-year grant at the outset instead of the usual two and a half years, which changes how the savings calculation runs and removes one of the three financial checkpoints.
Exceptional circumstances and the ten-year route
Where the requirement cannot be met from specified sources, a caseworker must still ask whether refusal would produce unjustifiably harsh consequences under Article 8. If it could, a wider range of resources comes into play, including a credible guarantee of third-party support and the applicant’s realistic future earnings in the UK. If it would, the visa has to be granted.
The bar is high and the evidence has to be specific rather than sympathetic. A grant on this basis also carries a price. It places the family on the ten-year route to settlement rather than the five-year one, with no further income test at extension, and with the option of switching back to the five-year route later if the £29,000 becomes provable.
Cost, timing, and the question everybody is asking
The question we field most often now is not what the requirement is. It is whether to apply now or wait for the review to report.
What the route costs from first application to settlement
For a single applicant on the standard partner route, entry clearance is £2,064 and the surcharge on a thirty-three month grant is £3,105. The extension is £1,407 with a further £2,587.50 of surcharge for thirty months. Settlement is £3,226, with no surcharge attached to it.
That is a little over £12,000 in government charges for one person across five years, before translations, English tests, travel to a visa application centre or professional fees, and before a second person is added to the application. Fees rose in April and there is nothing in the pattern of recent years to suggest that was the last increase.
Waiting for the review is a bet rather than a plan
The Committee’s options ranged from about £15,100 to £28,000. The two figures ministers were steered towards most directly were roughly £21,200 if family life is weighted more heavily, and a band of about £24,000 to £28,000 if a decent standard of living is treated as the priority. A reduction would open the route to a great many households.
Against that, there is no published timetable, no confirmed direction and no guarantee of any change at all. Meanwhile fees climb, the English standard at settlement moves in March 2027, the earned settlement model is still being drafted, and every month of waiting is another month apart for couples who are already separated.
The sensible frame is risk rather than prediction. If you meet the requirement now, applying now removes your exposure to changes that might not favour you. If you are a year of saving away, the review may well resolve before you are ready in any case. If you are a long way short and no realistic path closes the gap, the question is not timing at all but whether an Article 8 argument or a different route fits your facts, and that is a conversation for an adviser rather than a forum thread.
A working timetable for the year before you apply
Nothing in the financial requirement rewards improvisation. Almost all of it rewards starting early, because the evidential windows run six and twelve months long and they cannot be reconstructed after the fact.
Twelve to seven months out
Establish which threshold applies to you and write the number down. Move any savings you intend to rely on into a single accessible account in the right name and leave them alone. If a relative is gifting funds, complete the transfer now so the six-month clock starts running.
If a job change is on the horizon, think hard about sequencing. Staying put for six months puts you in Category A with one clean set of evidence. Moving now puts you in Category B and obliges you to prove both a current salary and a full twelve months of qualifying income.
Six to one month out
Collect payslips and matching bank statements as they arrive rather than downloading twelve of them in a panic at the end. Check each month that the credited amount matches the payslip to the penny, and make a note of any month where it does not so you can explain the difference in writing.
Ask your employer for the letter early. It has to confirm your employment, your job title, your gross annual salary, how long you have been employed and how long you have been paid at the level relied on, and it has to be signed and dated on headed paper. Employers routinely produce a first draft missing one of those elements, and a second draft takes days rather than minutes.
If you are self-employed, this is the point at which the accounts and the tax year overview need to exist rather than be in progress.
The final fortnight
Lay the pack out in the order Appendix FM-SE lists it and read it the way a stranger would. Every payslip dated inside the window. Every bank statement present and in sequence with no gap. The employer letter agreeing with the payslips. The savings balance never once dipping below the figure you are relying on across the full six months.
This is also where a second pair of eyes pays for itself, particularly where self-employment, a recent pay rise, several income sources or a protected threshold are in play. A review before submission costs a fraction of an appeal afterwards, and if you would rather not do it alone, our spouse visa application support is built around exactly this stage of the process.
FAQ:
- Question — Does the same £29,000 apply to a fiancé visa, and does it get tested again after the wedding?
Answer — Yes to both. The fiancé and proposed civil partner route carries the same financial requirement as the partner route. The grant lasts six months, does not permit work, and exists solely so the marriage or civil partnership can take place in the UK. Once it has, the applicant must apply for leave to remain as a partner, and the financial requirement is assessed again from scratch at that point. Time spent on the fiancé visa does not count towards the five years to settlement, so the clock effectively starts on the grant that follows the wedding.
- Question — Our income and savings are in a foreign currency. What rate does the Home Office use?
Answer — Not whichever rate you find online. The Rules specify how conversion is done, using a set rate fixed by reference to the date of application, with a Home Office-specified rate applied to a small number of currencies. Because the rate is pinned to a date you do not fully control, the practical advice is to leave headroom. A pack that clears £29,000 by £200 at today’s rate can fail on a currency movement between the day you assemble it and the day you press submit. Aim to clear the threshold by five per cent or more where foreign currency is involved.
- Question — Can a sponsor combine income from two jobs?
Answer — Yes, salaried employment with more than one employer can be added together, so long as each employment satisfies the evidential rules for the same assessment period. Under Category A that means each job has to have been held for at least six months, with its own payslips, its own employer letter and bank statements showing both salaries landing. Where one job is recent, the whole calculation is likely to fall under Category B instead, which brings the twelve-month test with it. Two jobs is not a problem. Two jobs on two different clocks usually is.
- Question — If the threshold is lowered while my application is sitting with the Home Office, will I benefit?
Answer — Almost certainly not, and it is worth understanding why. Statements of changes to the Immigration Rules normally apply to applications made on or after the commencement date, and applications made before it are decided under the Rules as they stood on the day of submission. That is how the April 2024 increase was handled, and it is the pattern to expect from any reduction. Applying early to catch a hoped-for change is not a strategy. Applying when your evidence is strongest is.
- Question — Do refugee sponsors and the adult dependent relative route face the same threshold?
Answer — No, and this is a distinction worth drawing carefully. Refugee family reunion for a partner or child who was part of the family before the sponsor fled sits outside Appendix FM and carries no minimum income requirement at all. The adult dependent relative route has no fixed income figure either, but it is demanding in a different way, requiring evidence that long-term personal care is needed and cannot reasonably be provided in the country where the relative lives, together with an undertaking that all care and accommodation costs will be met without recourse to public funds. Different tests, different evidence, and neither of them is £29,000.