UK partner visa: the income rule, the real cost, and the route most couples get wrong

First question : which visa is your couple’s?

Generic guides jump straight to “the spouse visa”. For a France–UK couple, that skips the decision that matters most. There are three different doors, and they have almost nothing in common:

• Your partner is British or settled (Indefinite Leave to Remain, or EU Settlement Scheme settled status — including French nationals who obtained it). This is the family (partner) visa: the £29,000 income rule, the evidence pack, everything in this guide.
• You’re both moving from France, one of you with a sponsored UK job. The other applies as a dependant partner on the work visa — a linked application with no minimum income rule on the sponsor, no £88,500 savings requirement, and full right to work. You prove the relationship (marriage, civil partnership, or 2 years living together) and pay the fee + IHS. See our Skilled Worker guide for the main applicant’s side.
• Your partner is an EU citizen who was living in the UK before 2021 with EUSS status: depending on when your relationship began, joining routes under the Settlement Scheme may still apply — a distinct set of rules worth checking on GOV.UK before assuming you need a family visa.

Couples lose real months here: preparing a family-visa evidence pack nobody will ask for, or — worse — assuming a dependant route exists when the partner is British and the £29,000 rule applies in full. Ten minutes of triage first; everything else follows from it. Note these rules attach to status, not nationality — a French national with settled status sponsors like a Brit, and a British partner who never lived in the UK recently still sponsors under the same income rules.

The £29,000 rule, honestly

For the family (partner) visa, the sponsor must show a gross income of at least £29,000 a year — a threshold set on 11 April 2024. Three things the headline hides:

• It’s the sponsor’s income that counts at entry. Applying from France, your own salary — however comfortable — does not enter the calculation. It only starts counting at extension stage, once you’re in the UK and allowed to work.
• No child supplements anymore. Under the current regime the threshold is flat, whether you bring children or not. (Couples who entered the route before 11 April 2024 stay on the old system: £18,600, plus £3,800 for a first child and £2,400 per additional child.)
• The evidence format is as strict as the amount. Employment income means payslips and matching bank statements over 6 months and an employer letter in a prescribed form. Self-employment has its own, heavier pack. Most refusals on income are about the paperwork, not the pounds.

One more thing worth knowing in August 2026: the independent Migration Advisory Committee recommended in June 2025 that the threshold be lowered to around £23,000–£25,000. The government hasn’t decided. Until the rules change, £29,000 is the number your file is judged against — plan on it, and treat any future drop as a bonus.

The savings alternative — how £88,500 works

No qualifying income? Cash savings can substitute. The mechanics: the first £16,000 doesn’t count; above that, every £2.50 of savings replaces £1 of annual income. Fully replacing £29,000 therefore takes £16,000 + 2.5 × £29,000 = £88,500. You can also mix: part income, part savings, same formula on the shortfall.

The conditions are unforgiving: the money must be held for at least 6 months in cash form (not stocks, not crypto, not a flat you’d have to sell), under the couple’s control, with statements to prove the whole period. A parent’s last-minute transfer doesn’t work — the 6-month clock restarts. If savings are your route, the preparation starts at least half a year before the application.

Proving the relationship — what “genuine and subsisting” means

You qualify through a marriage or civil partnership recognised in the UK, or as an unmarried partner after 2 years of living together (a fiancé(e) route exists too: 6 months to enter and marry, then switch — with no right to work in between). In every case the Home Office assesses whether the relationship is genuine and subsisting: real, current, and headed somewhere shared.

What convinces isn’t volume, it’s joint footprint over time: shared tenancy agreements or bills at the same address, joint accounts, travel together, photos across years, messages sampled across the whole relationship — not 300 pages printed the week before. Long-distance couples should keep evidence of visits and daily contact. Thin relationship evidence is the second classic refusal after income paperwork.

The real total cost — fee, IHS, and the parts nobody budgets

For a first application from abroad: £2,064 application fee + £3,105 Immigration Health Surcharge (£1,035 per year × 33 months) = £5,169, paid upfront, non-refundable if refused. Add the approved English test (roughly £150–£200), certified translations of French documents, and the optional priority service if you want a ~30-working-day decision instead of the standard ~12 weeks.

Then it repeats: the extension at 2 years 9 months costs £1,407 + £2,587.5 IHS, and settlement (ILR) at year 5 carries its own, larger fee. Across the route, £10,000+ per person in public costs alone is a realistic planning number. It’s a lot — and it’s exactly the kind of figure that should sit in the moving budget next to the deposit and the movers, not surface as a surprise. Our real cost of settling in London guide covers the rest of that budget.

The 5-year route — and English that rises with it

The route is two visas then settlement: 33 months granted from abroad, an extension of 30 months, and Indefinite Leave to Remain after 5 continuous years on the route. English requirements climb at each gate: A1 to enter, A2 to extend, B1 to settle — and the government has announced a rise of the settlement standard to B2 from 26 March 2027. Tests must be taken at approved (SELT) centres; a test from the wrong provider is a refusal, not a formality.

Practical planning: from France, the standard decision takes about 12 weeks — during which your passport sits with the application. Book removals, notice periods and school starts behind that window, not across it.

Avoidable refusals — where good files go wrong

• Income evidenced in the wrong format. Six months of payslips with bank statements that don’t match dates or amounts, or a missing employer letter — the rules specify documents to the comma, and near-misses are refused.
• Savings not seasoned. The £88,500 arrived four months ago: refusal. The 6-month holding rule has no tolerance.
• Counting the applicant’s foreign salary. It doesn’t count at entry — files built on it fail the maths.
• Relationship pack that’s thick but shallow. Hundreds of pages from one year, nothing across the span of the relationship.
• Wrong English test. Right level, non-approved centre.
• Wrong route entirely. A dependant-partner couple assembling a family-visa file — or the reverse. That’s the triage at the top of this guide.

A refusal costs the full fee and IHS refund aside, months of delay — and it must be declared in future applications. The cheapest insurance is sequencing the file correctly the first time.

Your plan — a preview, not the full checklist

The logic in short: triage the route before anything else, establish how the sponsor meets £29,000 (or season the savings 6 months ahead), build the relationship evidence across time, book the right English test, and budget £5,169+ without flinching. What we deliberately don’t hand you here is the full dated sequence — because the version that works is tied to your route, your sponsor’s payslip calendar, and your moving date, with the flat search and job start slotted around the 12-week decision window. That’s what Veia builds.