Does anyone know whether it would be possible to establish ordinary residence in the UK for the 2008/9 Tax Year in the UK if we don't move back until December 2008 (my husband will be in the Uk for a month from the end of August to the end of September this year if that makes any difference ?).

For my daughter to be able to claim domestic fee status for university in 2011 we need to have been ordinarily resident in the UK for 3 years but can't leave here until December 2008 as my son is finishing High School then. My daughter will be at school in the UK from September 2008 but I don't think that will satisfy the residency requirements - I think her parents need to be there too & we simply can't leave here until the December.

Would there be any advantage in having an address in the UK (with consequent council tax/utility bills) or is residence purely calculated on your physical presence in the country. Might well be cost effective to pay double taxation for a few months rather than be faced with international fees for university if we had that option ?

Does anyone have any knowledge about this ?

I havent done this but from the Liverpool university website there are the conditions that this university will apply for students who have not been there the whole time because their parents were overseas


5. Special ‘Home’ Classifications

The following categories of students are exceptions to the basic criteria defined above and may be granted a special ‘home’ classification subject to the production of all requested supporting documentation.
Students who meet the ‘settled status’ requirements but who have not been ‘ordinarily resident’ in the UK/EEA for the required period only because they, their spouse/civil partner or parents were temporarily employed outside the UK/EEA. Provision will be given for this as long as documentary evidence is provided to substantiate the temporary nature of the absence AND evidence is provided that sustained links were maintained with the UK/EEA throughout the period of absence. The sort of evidence we would require in these instances is as follows:
Evidence of the fixed-term or temporary nature of the employment overseas. This should cover the full period of the absence and explicitly state its temporary nature. A copy of the actual employment contract(s) would be most appropriate. An official letter from the employer confirming the temporary position would also be acceptable.
AND
Evidence of sustained links with the UK/EEA throughout the period of absence, in the form of utility bills or tax payments on a current property, copies of bank statements showing regular activity or evidence of income tax/NI payments in the permanent country of residence.

The payment of tax in the UK does not in itself satisfy the requirements for ‘home’ fee status.

From this site http://www.liv.ac.uk/sas/administration/feestatus.htm

Edited to add, as you will only be a few months short and will be back in UK as a family I would think you would be OK but it wouldnt hurt to sound out a few universities (the ones your daughter has no intention of applying for) to see what their view would be. The above is typical of several of the sites I looked at.

One way around it is for your daughter to take a Gap Year after taking her 'A' Levels. My daughter did this (she did a temporary part-time job and then went on an organised trek to India and Tibet). It meant that she qualified as a 'home student' even though we have lived overseas for 13 years on expat postings, and she did go to boarding school in Oxford for her 'A' levels, with her grandmother as her 'guardian' in England and for her UK home address as our house in Essex is rented out. Therefore 2 years at boarding school and 1 year as a Gap Year qualified her as a home student for tuition fees purposes and she applied for uni courses whilst on her Gap Year.

I would like to point out that she will remain in the UK, when we left Singapore to go on another expat assignment in the USA when she was 16 she chose to return to England. She never wanted to live in the US and has 'timed out' in any case for getting a dependent visa.

Some colleges are more strict than others regarding 'home status' - Southampton University was for example, asking for lots of evidence but she chose to go to Brunel University and they weren't concerned about home vs international student status and never even asked for any evidence!

If your daughter is going to school in the UK in the September and you won't be returning until December, whom will she be living with? Will you be appointing a guardian for her?

She will be at boarding school with probably my sister or her grandparents as guardians. She had intended to take a GAP year (partly to help with the residency status but also because she is very young for her academic year anyway) - but even with doing this she will still be border line for fee status - she herself will fit the criteria but we, as the payers of her fees,will be three months short (even though we are coming back to the UK permanently then).As she's thinking of reading a 5 year medical course it is a huge amount of money if she is assessed as an internatonal student !

I'm interested that you say the universities themselves determine fee status - I thought it was the individual LEA's who made that decision ( & as we don't know which area we will be living in it is impossible to ask what their decision would be).

If you are assessed as having to pay International fees, you appeal to the DUIS anyway. If you need student loans (which is where the LEA comes in), their determination can sometimes differ from the institutions, even though the qualification criteria is the same. If you are planning on paying fees and covering her costs, you won't have a problem appealling any decision to not award Home Student Status. They will ask you for proof of residence in the last three tax years, that is all. There is no way from that information that the Universities can determine if you are a couple of months short. Prudent address planning will suffice, unless, as I say, you need loans and then the bar is set a lot higher. The less <ahem> academic and competitive places aren't as fussy, but if you are looking at Med school, they know how it goes.