Changing in-country from visitor to EEA status as a spouse?

[Confused!]

I am currently in the UK as a visitor (non-visa national) and married to an EEA national (or more precisely, a Surinder Singh case of a UK citizen who has been exercising his treaty rights for years).

I arrived with the intention of attending to the house and then leaving to apply for the EEA Family Permit. As my husband was out of the country on the day I arrived, I came through as a 'normal' visitor under the Immigration Rule.

I was going to apply for the EEA Family Permit but I am already in the country legitimately as a visitor, and the accommodation overseas has become unsuitable, and we already have a house here and I need to be here for at least a week to attend to tradesmen to carry out repairs on the house (especially with my husband being away a lot, I am the only one who can easily be here), and I have a lot of social functions to attend in the UK in the next three weeks. It would keep things much more straight-forward if I simply applied for the Residence Card in the UK rather than taking the trouble to travel away to obtaining the EEA Family Permit. It is hard to find a 4-week gap in things I have to do to allow for EEA FP processing, although I know in reality most cases are processed more quickly.

I am wondering if I can just apply for a Residence Card and change my immigration category from a visitor to non-EEA family member of an EEA national while I am in the UK as a visitor?

My husband is a "qualified person", working for a British company and paying (a lot of!) UK taxes and national insurance, and we can provide a lot of documents to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that our marriage is not a marriage of convenience, and that we lived in an EU country together and exercised the EU treaty rights including his rights as a worker.

Also, does my husband have to apply for his registration certificate at the same time as I do? He does not need it (being a British citizen anyway), and as a British citizen I am not even sure if he can in fact obtain one, and besides he cannot possibly be without his passport for more than 2 days as he travels extensively with work, so we cannot send his passport off. He is unable to work without his passport.

Has anyone successfully taken this route?



I have also noticed that the registration documents for EEA nationals are now available at the Croydon public enquiry counter. Does it mean that Residence Cards for non-EEA national EEA family member is also available at the Croydon public enquiry counter on the same day service? This will solve the problem of not being able to send my husband's passport.