My son has been living in Dubai since August 2012, my grand daughter, aged 2, has a heart condition. My son is under the impression that children can still access the NHS for 3 years, is this correct? I am a concerned grandma and hope someone can put my mind at ease.

Hi and welcome to British Expats

I'm going to move your post into our UK forum, as I know we have several people in there who are well-versed in NHS ways. Hopefully some of them can help you out

Not unless they are ordinarily resident in UK. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.g...able/DH_074374
http://www.pah.nhs.uk/files/c%29%20N...20Citizens.pdf

But couldn't you satisfy the authorities that this applies, in this case:

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.g...able/DH_128866

always assuming that the son was in the UK before arriving in Dubai and for the requisite period of ten years. Plus you need to prove you are only overseas working for up to five years.

Good catch!

It seems odd that someone out of the country for 6 months on holiday loses the right but someone working overseas for up to 5 yrs still gets it. Weird!

Indeed! But the irony is that you would need to convince the NHS people that you are still ordinarily resident, as per your original post, and you would still get the benefit of NHS hospital treatment. Irony, because typically one is trying to convince the people at HMRC that one is not ordinarily resident but I would guess that if one can show one is still declaring taxes on one's world income because one is still ordinarily resident for tax purposes this must go a long way towards satisfying the NHS people. Ideally there would have to be a pattern of these 6 months on holiday, further ideally with no NHS hospital treatment just because of this issue, and being treated as ordinarily resident for tax purposes. This rule it seems is there to stop people having their cake and eating it.

Presumably your son's employer provides medical insurance for him and the rest of the family?

We are on an expat posting and the company insures us for medical with BUPA International (a seperate division from the domestic BUPA organisation). It covers us worldwide, as do many medical insurance companies which cover employees on expatriate postings.

Which company is your son insured with?

It does say on another document I found that if you have "emigrated" then you lose the right. Very complicated!

So this five year thing is just a tour of duty or posting it seems.

That would be the nub I think.

Yes, I suspect it's for military personel and for staff of embassies and consulates as they are moving as part of their job for the government.