In short: if you left the UK with permission and came back with permission, your continuous residence survives — but the days in between are still deducted from your qualifying period under CR 4.2. Continuity and the clock are two separate questions, and getting them confused is the most common way a hand-counted completion date comes out wrong.
The rule, in the order it actually applies
CR 4.1(d)(iii) protects continuity for someone who had permission when they left the UK and returned with valid permission, on the same route or another one — provided the absence itself stays within the CR 3.1/3.2/3.3 limits. That much most applicants get right: they know a book-ended gap does not reset their ten-year clock.
CR 4.2 then does something separate: "Where CR 4.1(d)(i) to (iv) applies, any period of time where the applicant did not have permission will not be included in any calculation of the qualifying period in CR 1.1." It is triggered by the very provision that just saved your continuity — deliberately, not as an oversight. Continuity intact, days deducted, completion date pushed back by exactly as many days as you were without permission. Both are true at once.
The argument that doesn't hold up
A version of this comes up in representations: CR 2.1(d) breaks continuity only "during any period where the applicant required permission and did not have it" — and someone physically outside the UK, the argument runs, does not require permission while they're not here, so CR 4.2 shouldn't touch those days either.
The wording doesn't support it. That "required" qualifier belongs to CR 2.1(d) — the continuity-breaking test — not to CR 4.2, which reads simply "did not have permission", with no equivalent condition. And CR 4.2's own opening line ties it directly to CR 4.1(d)(i)–(iv), the exact set of cases where continuity is preserved despite a lack of permission. Reading "required" into it would leave CR 4.2 with almost nothing left to deduct — the standard sign that a construction is working against the text rather than with it. Immigration solicitors we've seen raise this frame it as an argument worth making in representations, not as a settled reading, and every published practitioner guide we've checked states the plain version: the gap survives, the days still don't count.
A worked example
Someone leaves the UK on 30 September with permission expiring the same day, applies for a new visa from abroad, and returns on 15 March the following year holding valid entry clearance. Continuity is intact under CR 4.1(d)(iii). But the 166 days between departure and the new permission taking effect are deducted under CR 4.2 — the ten-year qualifying period simply takes 166 days longer to complete than it would have if that trip had never happened.
That deduction still has to clear whichever absence limit applies to when the trip started — 184 days in a single absence before 11 April 2024, or 180 days in any rolling 12-month period on or after it. A gap that is disregarded for one purpose is not automatically within limits for the other.
What this site does about it
The Long Residence calculator tracks an out-of-country gap as two figures, not one: whether it breaks continuity, and separately, how many days it removes from the qualifying period. Both appear on the result and on the printed report, with the paragraph each figure comes from.
Sources
- Immigration Rules: Appendix Continuous Residence — CR 2.1, CR 4.1, CR 4.2
- Continuous residence guidance (caseworkers)
This is general information, not legal advice. Check the current rules on GOV.UK and take advice from a regulated adviser about your own case.