Permitted activities

What you can do as a Standard Visitor

The Standard Visitor route covers a broad range of short-term reasons for coming to the UK. The main permitted purposes are:

• Tourism, such as a holiday or general sightseeing
• Visiting family or friends
• Certain business activities, such as attending a meeting or an interview
• Taking part in specific paid engagements as an expert in your profession, for example giving a lecture or performing (a 'permitted paid engagement')
• Volunteering for up to 30 days with a registered charity
• Passing through the UK on the way to another country (being 'in transit')
• Studying, doing a placement or taking an exam (see the study limits below)
• Taking a recreational course of up to 30 days, for example a dance course
• Taking part in a school exchange programme
• Visiting in a specific professional capacity, such as an academic, senior doctor or dentist
• Coming to the UK for medical reasons

Business meetings and short business trips

The route allows certain business activities but not doing a job. In practice this means things like attending meetings, negotiations or interviews are permitted, while actually working for or being employed by a UK organisation is not. If your trip involves being paid for your work in the UK, that generally falls outside ordinary business visiting and may need a different route, unless it fits the narrow 'permitted paid engagement' category described below.

There are extra, more detailed eligibility conditions attached to business activities and to permitted paid engagements, so it is worth checking the specific rules for your situation before you travel rather than assuming an activity is covered.

Study as a visitor

You can study as a Standard Visitor, but only short courses. General study is limited to courses of up to six months, and purely recreational courses (such as a short dance course) are limited to 30 days. There can be additional eligibility requirements if you are coming to study, do a placement or take an exam.

If you want to take a longer course, the visitor route will not cover it and you would normally need to look at a dedicated study route instead.

What you cannot do

The clearest boundary on the visitor route is around work and settling. As a Standard Visitor you cannot:

• Do paid or unpaid work for a UK company, or work as a self-employed person, other than the narrow permitted paid engagements the rules specifically allow
• Claim public funds (state benefits)
• Live in the UK for long periods through frequent or successive visits, or make the UK your main home
• Marry or register a civil partnership, or give notice of a marriage or civil partnership (this needs a different type of visa)

You cannot live in the UK through repeat visits

A single visit can normally last up to six months. However, the visitor route is not a way to live in the UK by stringing trips together. The rules expect you to show that you will not live in the UK for extended periods through frequent or successive visits, and that the UK will not become your main home.

This matters at the border as well as when you apply: someone who spends most of the year in the UK across back-to-back visits, or who appears to be based here, can be refused entry even if each individual trip is within the six-month limit. If your goal is to live in the UK, you need a route designed for that, not the visitor route.

Other routes have their own conditions

Everything above describes the Standard Visitor route as an example. Other routes work differently. Work visas allow employment but usually tie you to a specific sponsor or job; study visas allow longer courses but come with attendance and, sometimes, work-hour limits; family routes allow you to live here but have their own financial and relationship requirements. Always check the conditions of the specific route you hold or are applying for, because doing something permitted on one route may breach the conditions of another.