The main condition of a granted visa is that if used its start and end dates* for entry to and exit from the UK MUST be respected. If you in particular ignore the departing the UK date, you become in law an Overstayer liable to immediate deportation. *Please be aware that the Home Office on the immigration history records they keep often make major errors, one of which can be giving entry or exit dates that are not those on your visa: for example an entry to exit timescale of 6.5 months or 5.5 months on a SIX MONTHS fixed duration visa.
If you BEFORE your departure back out of the UK date apply (this involves in particular applying for asylum) to the Home Office to stay for some exceptional reason (usually linked to personal safety being CLEARLY threatened by a major change of your personal circumstances) then you are NOT an ‘Overstayer,’ as you contacted the Home Office. If you fail to make such a contact BEFORE your visa expires, then your status will be from the moment the visa expires, an Overstayer, and therefore no longer in the UK on a legal basis.
The other main conditions imposed are: the right to work, or the right to benefits, or the withholding of one or both of these (whichever variation of these possibilities, will be recorded on your visa and/or Home Office biometric ID card.
The most controversial area of conditions imposed, relating to imposition of the Hostile Environment on visa holders – very much linked to the spirit of the Theresa May ‘Go Home Vans campaign’ of 2013, as incentivising for economic/poverty inflicting reasons, relates to not including the right to work.
Overstaying:
Abiding by conditions of a visa that has been granted, is the basis in which one of the most vicious forms of implementing the Hostile Environment at operational level, is the false statement of a visa holder being ‘an overstayer’ when it is known the person entered and continues to stay in the UK on a legally entitled to be in the country basis.
Definitions of ‘Overstayer’ and being in the UK legally but with immigration status resolution pending due to involvement in an ongoing appeal process, are important to know of – please see below:
Home Office definition of ‘Overstayer’*: both a) caught-out genuine illegal immigrants / overstayers, and b) someone in the UK legally but without settled immigration status (and usually caught in the Tribunal appeals system).
Objective / independent Non-Home Office definition of ‘Overstayer’: Those who purposely stay on in the UK after the departure date provided on their visa.
* Unfortunately under the Hostile Environment at its operational multiagency delivered level, the term ‘Overstayer’ can and is used by those often at very senior (such as ‘Chief Operating Officer’) level in attempts to effect illegal deportations. There is compelling evidence on this slanderous tactic: even Immigration History Records are changed in key places to try and ‘evidence’ such illegal tactics. We possess evidence of this with assertions of overstaying made that have been made by such highest operational level officers in the UKVI who have presented such slander to actual Members of Parliament even though having directly, or access to evidence of multiple and compelling kinds which have made the given Targeted individual came to and had always been legally in the UK.