The Armed Forces Pay Rise 2023 has gone a long way to reduce the effect of the Minimum Income Requirement (MIR) for our Non-UK serving personnel to sponsor eligible family members (spouse, partner & children) into the UK. For those of you that are not aware, you need to be earning £18,600 to sponsor a partner and £22,400 for a partner and one child into the UK. This increases by £2,400 per additional child and you need to be earning that amount for 6 months prior to applying. The New Entry rates of pay now exceed the amount required to sponsor a partner into the UK so all of our Non UK Royal Navy and Royal Marines personnel meet this requirement from joining but still have to wait until they complete their Phase 2 of training before applying for SFA (if required).

For those applying with a partner and one child, the MIR is now met after one year in Service. This previously took 3 ½ years to meet, leaving our Non-UK serving personnel separated from their families for a prolonged period.

Unfortunately, there is still an issue for those with more than one child as the the MIR for a partner and two children is £24,800. This means a waiting time of around four years after completing training or making up the shortfall by other means. The shortfall is £1,340 from year one but only £400 from year two. This shortfall can be made up in a number of ways;

• Additional payments such a Seagoing allowances count towards your salary. From year two, the £400 shortfall could be achieved by accruing a minimum of 48 days basic seagoing pay at the new rate. Being assigned to a seagoing Unit/Ship is helpful in these situations
• Applying to your Chain of Command for permission to take up secondary employment is another method you can use to help to meet the MIR. As an example, current pay for an Amazon delivery driver is £13.15 an hour. The £400 shortfall could be made up with 31 hours of additional work. BR2 Chapter 84 contains the regulations on what type of work you can and can’t do.
• Bringing over your partner first to commence employment is another alternative way to meet the MIR as you can combine the two salaries. NFF can link your spouse/partner into service employment charities that can assist in gaining employment at the earliest opportunity. Therefore, reducing the amount of time that it takes to meet the MIR to bring your children to the UK.

If you have any questions about this, please do get in touch with the Immigration Team at immigration@nff.org.uk

See further information on the Minimum Income Requirement here.