Required documents for 10 years ILR - excessive? HELP!

[jazzwillie]

Hi all, I'm in the middle of putting together the documents requested for the 10 years ILR application and would appreciate if anyone else could offer some insight/guidance/advise on the following:

1. 10 years worth of bills
Most bills these days are paperless, and when I was a student the bills weren't in my names, and even if they were I would have binned them by now. Is UKBA strict with this requirement? I wont have 10 years worth of council tax bills either because I was exempted when I was a student.

2. Photocopies of supporting documents
Do they want us to photocopy everything? So basically we're duplicating the whole application in its entirety?

I may not get any sympathy for this, but I must admit I feel broken by this process. I'm having to make so many calls to various agencies to request for various documents from years ago. But I think I'm definitely not going to be able to obtain anything between 2003-2004 as even bank statements will only go back as far as 7 years!

Can anyone offer some advise as to how strictly are they wanting us to make sure we have every single record for the last 10 years? I would have thought my passports, visas, etc will be enough to show them that I was here legally. Wouldn't they have a record on me each time I had my Visa approved and renewed over the last 10 years?

Appreciate any help anyone can offer.

Thanks

[Amber]

If you have passports covering the 10 years you shouldn't need all those documents.

[jazzwillie]

Thanks for the reply! I most definitely have passports covering the 10 years, and I'd like to think that this would suffice. I'll have no choice in the end to submit it without the bills, but it's comforting to know that someone else at least thinks the same logic as I do.

What about the photocopies? Does anyone know if UKBA really wants a duplicate of the entire application?