Advice on applying for UK citizenship

Apr 21, 2025 • Yousef Amar • 6 min read

Towards the end of October 2024, my application for UK citizenship was approved. I first moved to the UK 14 years before that, in October 2010. I didn't stay in the UK permanently since that date, but overall I've probably spent more time in the UK than anywhere else.

Me at the ceremony with the Honorary Alderman

Arguably I didn't really need UK citizenship. I already had Settled Status under the EU Settlement Scheme, having lived in the UK before Brexit, which meant I already had most of the privileges of being a UK citizen (besides voting on parliamentary elections) provided I don't leave the UK for too long.

In fact, once I was actually able to apply by UK law, I was no longer able to apply by German law. German law stipulated that you cannot have dual nationality with a non-EU country (barring exceptional circumstances), and I didn't qualify pre-Brexit. This is why I had to give up my Egyptian citizenship to get the German one. But in June 2024, that law changed.

Do it as soon as you can

The first thing you'll find is that it's expensive!! Put aside £2k for this whole exercise. On paper, the most expensive part is the actual application, which was just over £1.6k when I applied, up from £1.2k the year before and seems to be rapidly increasing every year. You can get away with not paying much more for the remaining parts:

You probably don't need to buy the Life in the UK books. If you're an immigrant like I am, you probably have immigrant friends, and it's extremely likely that one of them already has the books from a previous year. I got mine for free that way and then gave them to the next person for free.

You're not allowed to take photos at the citizenship ceremony (though we snuck a few), but they have a professional photographer you can pay. In my opinion, these photos are nice and you should pay for them. I think you wan't to put another £100 or so aside for that.

Do not pay for a private ceremony, it's an absolute farce, just do the public group ceremonies like the rest of us. Feel like one of the people!

So the sooner you do this, the less things will cost. In my opinion, it's worth it, as a passport is a powerful thing, and you ideally want to have your eggs in many baskets and to not be beholden to a single government.

Study enough for the test

People get really hung up about the Life in the UK test. I know it's stupid, but it's a necessary medicine you need to swallow, so just do it and stop complaining. It's really not that big of a deal. It's more inconvenient to have to find the time to commute to a testing centre in the middle of nowhere.

Remember that you only need to get 75%, this is not a university entrance exam, so don't over-egg it. You don't need the latest editions of the books and study guide, use a set from the year before. The changes are minimal (in mine, the only major difference was that the queen had died since it was published).

Read the books once back-to-back, then do practice questions. I used this app (unofficial, free) to practice questions. There are many like it. I already do Duolingo daily, so I habit chained doing at least one test per day with these. Very quickly you start remembering the dates and the tricky questions.

Do not try to memorise all the dates and kings and poets etc. For me this was the most difficult part, as I don't have good rote memorisation skills, and the questions are often misleading (e.g. 1814 or 1815 or 1915 or 1951) so you would have to rely on accurate mnemonics.

The trick is that you only need 75%, so just memorise the easy stuff. You get 45 minutes in the exam, but I was out in 4 minutes. The reason for this is because multiple-choice test lend themselves well to exam strategies. What I did was first answer all the questions I was confident about (you can skip questions and come back to them later). These were the ones asking if forced marriage is allowed etc. I skipped the ones that I struggle to remember, like how many seats there are in the Scottish parliament.

Then, I counted the ones I answered, and divided it by the total number of questions. It was over 75%. So I guessed the rest and walked out. 10 minutes later, I got the email saying I passed.

I was also prepared to fail this exam, as spending another £50 a few weeks later to retry was less hassle for me than to study harder with diminishing returns, but that may be different for you if £50 is hard to come by.

Have British friends

You need 2 people who have known you for 3 years to agree to be your referees. I found this quite awkward as I don't like asking people to do me a favour like this. While they both need to be UK residents, I think only one of them needs to be British (I got 2 Brits just in case). It also made me realise just how many of my long-term friends are not British. Make sure you have British friends

The instructions they gave for the form are extremely silly. I needed to print and bring the physical form to my friends to have them sign the underside of the passport photo before I glue it etc. It doesn't make sense. Yes it's just more hurdles. But I found that it's actually ok to half-ass this.

When you get to the biometrics appointment, they don't care about any of that. They'll scan the form and not check anything. You might as well do the whole thing digitally and print it.

If you can, pick friends who haven't moved a lot, to make things easier for them, as you need a lot of personal information from them (e.g. their address history). Go through the whole form first and ask them for everything all at once, once they've agreed, as it's embarrassing to have to go back and be like "sorry, I also need X".

My friends have said they have not received any phone calls regarding me. So it's likely just yet another hoop to jump through.

Application shortcuts

I've heard that applications get rejected if your travel history is not accurate. I don't know if this is true, but it hasn't happened to me. I got a bit concerned after mine took longer than I expected, so I called to ask about it, but they said that there can be a lot of variance in the turnaround time for applications.

However, if you travel as much as I do, it would be a nightmare to have to figure out all the times you left the country for more than 2 days. There's a shortcut! Request the data from the Home Office here. Give them all your passport numbers, and in a few weeks (sometimes longer, but I was lucky), they'll send you a PDF with every single flight you took in and out of the country.

All I had to do then was go through the list and copy it into the form. You need to put a reason -- I think it's enough granularity to say "business" or "vacation", but I wrote things like "visiting family". It was fortunately quite easy for me to remember what the reason was based on the country.

This is how you shorten the most time-consuming part of the application. After that, just answer the remaining questions sensibly.

Passport application

This one can be a bit annoying, as you have to send them physical original copies of everything. They will send it back with Royal Mail who absolutely do not care about your stuff and will wreck it. Since I wanted them to include my Dr title in the passport, I had to ask my mum to send me my original degree certificate from Germany. Spoiler alert: they don't put it as a title like in German passports, they simply type on the opposite page (in an amateurish way) "The holder of this passport has the title of doctor" or something like that.

Anyway, get your padded envelope and send everything off with first class delivery. They'll send it back in a flimsy envelope. In mine, they didn't send back the cardboard I had put in, nor the original passport photos, nor some extra bits (e.g. I had included the original envelope of the naturalisation certificate which contained some welcome docs. Gone). I didn't mind as I got all the important stuff back undamaged.

Veronica wasn't so lucky and they crumpled her naturalisation certificate when she did it. That document is quite expensive to replace, and easy to void, so she complained and fortunately eventually they agreed to replace it for her. It's really quite a hassle though, so if you can, put a cardboard envelope inside the padded envelope you send, and if you're lucky they'll send it back with it. I even put instructions on post-it notes inside, but I think they're probably just very careless at the passport office.

If they damage your naturalisation certificate in any way complain loudly. Call them and tell them that you need it replaced. Channel your inner Karen.

For the passport photos, there are booths everywhere in tube stations, just go to one with a curtain and good lighting. Some of them have an adjustable stool -- those are the best so you don't have to contort yourself.

Copyright © Yousef Amar