Please see following the response of an immigration solicitor to my query I posted on Justanswer.com regarding 3 days gap in my 10 years lawful residence:
Requirements for long residence
The applicant must meet the following requirements to be granted indefinite leave:
The applicant must have at least 10 years lawful residence in the UK.
There must be no reason why granting leave is against the public good.
The applicant must meet the knowledge of language and life requirement.
The applicant must not fall for refusal under the general grounds for refusal.
Strictly speaking you have not completed 10 years lawful residence in the UK as your leave to remain had expired before you completed the 10 years. What you should have done to make sure leave was granted was to apply for further leave to remain as a tier 1 and thereafter once you would have completed the 3 days then applied for ILR and paid the excess fees and asked the UKBA to vary your leave to remain to ILR from tier 1 further leave to remain.
Now the guidance do state that there must be 10 years continuous leave to remain in the UK which you unfortunatley seem to fall short of , now there have been instances when the caseworker has been lenient and has granted leave to remain but in most cases they have strictly adhered to the rules and not granted ILR.
If ILR is refused what you would need is inform the UKBA that you have now completed your 10 years as paragraph 3C of the immigration rules would have extended your current leave to remain and therefore by the time you receive your refusal your 10 years would have been completed.
Please see following link for further information and clarification:
http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitec ... iew=Binary
I am sorry if this was not the advice you wanted to hear. I hope this answers your question, if so kindly rate my answer positively.
Kind regards