Lost access to your eVisa or UKVI account

Before you touch a recovery form, decide which of five faults you are looking at, because the routes diverge immediately and starting down the wrong one wastes days you may not have. Fault one: you can reach the sign-in page, you have the phone and the email, but the password or the document details are not being accepted. Fault two: you have lost access to the registered mobile number — a stolen handset, a discarded foreign SIM, a number that lapsed while you were out of the country — but the email still works. Fault three: the mirror image, where the email account is gone but the phone still receives codes.

Fault four is the serious one: both the registered mobile and the registered email are beyond reach. This is far more common than it sounds. It catches people who set the account up years ago on a pay-as-you-go SIM they no longer own, people whose university or employer email was closed when they left, and people whose account was created for them by somebody else. GOV.UK is explicit that where a parent or guardian set an account up on a child's behalf they used their own contact details, and that the account should be moved onto the young person's own number and email once they can manage it or turn eighteen — a handover that frequently never happens.

Fault five is not a lockout at all. The account opens, you are signed in, and the eVisa shows the wrong date of birth, the wrong nationality, an old immigration status, or nothing whatever. That is a data problem in the Home Office record, and no amount of password resetting will touch it. It goes to the report-an-error service described later in this guide, not to account recovery.

There is a sixth situation that sits underneath several of the others: you no longer hold the identity document you originally used. A passport that has been renewed, lost or stolen, a biometric residence permit thrown away when it expired, a national identity card that has been replaced. The account still exists and your status is intact, but the credential the sign-in page expects is not in your hands. That has its own fix and it is covered in its own section below.

Write down, before you start, which of these describes you and what you still hold: which phone number, which email address, which document, and any reference number you can find on old Home Office correspondence. Every recovery route asks for some combination of those, and hunting for them halfway through a form that times out is how people end up making three failed attempts and concluding the system is broken.

The UKVI account is deliberately built around two independent things: a document that identifies you, and a contact route that proves the request is coming from you. GOV.UK lists the documents the sign-in page will accept as a passport, a national identity card, a biometric residence card whether valid or expired, an expired biometric residence permit, or your UKVI customer number. Alongside that you need access to the mobile phone number or the email address you use to sign in. Miss either half and you are stopped.

That structure is why the advice "reset your password" so often misses the point. Most people who cannot get into an eVisa have not forgotten anything — they have simply stopped being reachable at the number or address the account holds. The credential you can prove is fine. The channel the system wants to send a code down is dead.

It is also why an expired document is not automatically useless. GOV.UK's account set-up guidance states that an expired biometric residence permit can be used to create an account for twenty-four months after it expired, or until 31 December 2026. That is a sign-in credential, not a proof of status: the Home Office's employer guidance was updated in July 2026 to make clear that an expired BRP is not acceptable evidence of the right to work. The card gets you through the door; it does not satisfy an employer standing on the other side of it.

The UKVI customer number is the credential most people do not know they have. It is generated for account holders and appears in Home Office correspondence, and it is an alternative to producing a document at all. If you have any letters or emails from UKVI, go through them before you conclude you cannot identify yourself.

Reference numbers matter for the same reason. Citizens Advice explains that where you cannot find your Home Office reference number — the unique application number or GWF number quoted on your visa correspondence — you should not abandon the process, because a "request your reference" step is built into the online journey and will supply it. Citizens Advice also notes that where a BRP has been lost or stolen you can identify yourself with your travel document plus your visa application reference instead.

Finally, note that none of this costs anything. GOV.UK states in terms that you do not need to pay to set up a UKVI account or to access your eVisa. Any site charging you to recover access, generate a share code or "unlock" your status is not the Home Office.

If either the registered mobile or the registered email still reaches you, this is a fifteen-minute job and you should do it today rather than when you next need the account. Sign in using the credential that works, then use the update service to replace the one that does not. GOV.UK's guidance on updating your UKVI account confirms that mobile phone number and email address are both fields you can change yourself once you are inside, along with your name, home and postal addresses, nationality, date of birth corrections, passport or travel document details, and your photo.

Change both to something durable while you are in there. A personal email address you control rather than a work or university one, and a UK number you intend to keep. If you spend long periods outside the UK, consider whether the number you have listed will still receive text messages when you are abroad — a code that cannot arrive is functionally the same as a number you no longer own.

There are two restrictions worth knowing before you start. GOV.UK states that you cannot change your name, or your passport or travel document, while you are waiting for a decision on a visa application. And where you want to change a name or date of birth but hold no document evidencing the change, the standard update service will not take it; GOV.UK routes those cases to a different service instead.

If the account is one somebody else set up for you, this is also the moment to take ownership of it properly. Replace their number and their email with yours, check the address details, and confirm that the identity document listed is the one you actually hold. An account you cannot independently access is a lockout waiting for a date.

Do not stop once the details are saved. Sign out completely, sign back in using the new contact route, and confirm a code arrives. Then generate a share code and check it works. An update that silently failed is worth nothing, and the moment to discover that is now rather than at an airport check-in desk.

When neither the registered phone nor the registered email can be reached, self-service inside the account is closed to you and you need the Home Office's separate account recovery service. GOV.UK's "view and prove your immigration status" page states plainly that you can get help to recover your UKVI account if you are having problems signing in to view your eVisa, and links out to that service, which runs at update-your-details.homeoffice.gov.uk. It is free, it is the official route, and it exists precisely because the two-credential design leaves people stranded.

Go into it with your paperwork assembled. Expect to be asked to identify yourself from the document linked to your status — passport, national identity card, biometric residence card or permit — together with your name, date of birth and nationality exactly as the Home Office holds them, and a reference number if you have one. Where your details have changed since the record was created, use the old ones as well as the new ones; the record is matched against what was captured then, not what is true now.

Recovery is not instantaneous and it is not a password reset. It is an identity check run by people, and it is meant to be slow enough to be safe. That is deliberate rather than obstructive: an account that could be recovered by anybody who knew your date of birth would be an account through which somebody else could prove your right to work. Build the delay into whatever deadline you are working towards, and start the process before the deadline rather than after it.

If recovery stalls, the human escalation is the UKVI contact centre. Citizens Advice publishes the number as +44 (0)300 790 6268, taking option 3 for eVisa and UKVI account problems, and the immigration charity Right to Remain lists the same number alongside +44 (0)203 875 4669 for callers who cannot dial 0300 numbers, describing the escalation ladder as webchat first for simple queries, then the resolution centre for technical and account faults, then the online form for wrong details or status. Expect to answer identity questions on the call and have the same documents in front of you.

Two practical warnings. First, ring from a number you can be called back on and give an email address you will actually check, because responses often come by email days later. Second, keep a written log — date, time, who you spoke to, what you were told, any reference given. If this later becomes a complaint, or a reason you could not start a job, that log is the only evidence you will have that you acted promptly.

A large share of lockouts are not about phones or emails at all. The account is fine; the person no longer holds the document it expects. A passport renewed, lost or stolen, or a biometric residence permit binned when it expired, and suddenly the sign-in page is asking for something that no longer exists in the drawer.

If the passport has been replaced, the fix is to sign in with what you still have — an expired BRP, a biometric residence card, or your UKVI customer number — and then update the passport details inside the account. If you cannot get in at all, the account recovery route above is the way back, and the passport update follows once you are inside.

If you were relying on an expired BRP as your sign-in credential, note the clock on it. GOV.UK's set-up guidance gives that route a life of twenty-four months from the card's expiry, or until 31 December 2026. Anyone still using an expired permit to identify themselves should get into the account and add a current passport well before that window closes, because afterwards the credential simply stops working.

A distinct group has no digital record to reach at all. People whose settlement is evidenced only by an old ink stamp or a vignette in a passport have indefinite leave to remain but no eVisa behind it. GOV.UK's guidance for settled people sets out the No Time Limit application as the route: it is free, it requires your contact details, the passport or travel document you last entered the UK on and the physical document proving your settlement, and it involves giving fingerprints and a photograph at a UK Visa and Citizenship Application Services point. It takes up to six months, during which you can carry on using your physical document. Crucially, GOV.UK warns against making an NTL application if you already have another form of evidence such as an expired BRP or status under the EU Settlement Scheme — those have different routes.

If you genuinely cannot lay hands on any reference number, follow the Citizens Advice point above and start the online journey anyway: the "request your reference" step is built in for exactly this situation, and stopping because you cannot find a number is the most common avoidable dead end.

One more group deserves naming. If your account was created by a sponsor, a former employer, an agent or a legal representative using their contact details, they may still hold the keys to a record that is legally yours. Ask them, in writing, for the number and email on the account. If the relationship has broken down and they will not tell you, the account recovery service and the contact centre are your route, and the fact that a third party controls your access is itself worth stating on the call.

The most expensive version of this problem is discovered at an airport. GOV.UK's travel guidance is direct about the mechanism: your eVisa is linked to the passport registered in your UKVI account, your details must match the passenger information you give your carrier, and if they do not, the carrier may refuse to let you travel and you may face delays at the UK border. The check happens when you check in with an airline, ferry or train operator, and again at border control or the eGates.

So the single most valuable maintenance task is keeping the passport in the account identical to the passport in your pocket. Do it as soon as a new passport arrives, not when a trip is booked. GOV.UK sets out that holders of a biometric passport can update the passport number, expiry date, name and nationality themselves, while holders of a non-biometric passport can only update the number and expiry date on their own — other changes have to go through UKVI, and may require attending a visa application centre to give biometrics again.

That difference matters enormously for timing. A self-service change is same-day. A change routed through UKVI with a biometric appointment is a process measured in weeks, and it is not something you can start the night before a flight. If you hold a non-biometric travel document and anything beyond the number and expiry has altered, treat it as a project rather than an errand.

If you are already abroad when the passport changes, the position is more delicate still, because your ability to update the record from outside the UK is exactly what determines whether you can board a flight back. Update the account before you travel out, generate a share code before you go, and keep a copy of it somewhere that does not depend on the phone in your pocket.

There is a genuine consolation here, and it is one of the few things that makes an eVisa better than a card. Home Office caseworker guidance instructs officials checking status to verify against the departmental record using your sixteen-digit immigration reference number, and to accept the eVisa without further documentation where that record matches your biographic details. Border Force is not reading your phone screen. It is reading the same system your eVisa is a window onto — which is why a flat battery at passport control is an inconvenience rather than a catastrophe.

That does not extend to carriers. An airline is not checking a Home Office database at a check-in desk in the way a Border Force officer is; it is matching your document to what it has been told about you, and it carries its own liability for boarding someone without permission to enter. Assume the airline will be the strictest link in the chain, and satisfy it first.

The ordinary way to prove status is a share code generated from your account. GOV.UK explains that a share code lasts 90 days, can be used more than once within that period, and that the person checking will also need your date of birth — they see some of your personal information, but you never have to show them the eVisa itself. Generating a fresh code takes seconds while you have access, which is the argument for keeping a live one in reserve.

Locked out, you cannot generate one — but you are not therefore unable to prove anything, and this is the part of the problem that almost nothing published outside the Home Office explains. There are two official back doors, and they are used by the employer or landlord rather than by you.

For work, it is the Employer Checking Service. GOV.UK states that an employer only needs it where they cannot check the applicant's right to work online using a share code or check original documents, and lists the covered situations explicitly — including a person having technical issues getting a share code, an outstanding application or appeal with the Home Office, arrival before 1988 with no documentation, a non-digital Certificate of Application, or an Application Registration Card. The employer submits your full name, date of birth, nationality, job title, weekly hours and UK address alongside their business details. This is not a favour: employers face fines of up to £60,000 per illegal worker, so the service exists to give them a defensible answer when the online route fails.

For renting, the equivalent is the Home Office right to rent check that a landlord can request where you cannot prove your status online. That obligation only bites in England — GOV.UK is explicit that you do not need to prove your right to rent in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland — and it applies to anyone aged eighteen or over who pays to occupy the property as their main home, including sub-tenants and paying lodgers. GOV.UK also states that a landlord cannot reject you on the basis of which of the acceptable options you choose to use.

Say the words out loud to the employer or letting agent, because many of them do not know the services exist: "I cannot generate a share code at the moment. Please use the Employer Checking Service", or "please request a Home Office right to rent check". An employer who is told this and still withdraws an offer is making a decision they did not need to make. GOV.UK's right to work guidance also makes clear that an employer must not discriminate on the basis of which permitted method you use to prove your status.

Immigration is a reserved matter, so the eVisa and UKVI account rules described here are identical in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The only meaningful divergence is the right to rent scheme, which is an England-only regime. Northern Ireland's own public information service, nidirect, mirrors the GOV.UK position and additionally lists local organisations that supported people through the transition.

If you can sign in but the record is wrong, you need the report-an-error service rather than account recovery. GOV.UK lists what it covers: eVisa details that are wrong, such as the wrong date of birth or immigration status; being able to see the eVisa but unable to generate a share code; a technical error that stops the eVisa displaying while you are signed in; and an account that the Home Office set up for you which you have never successfully signed into.

Have the identifiers ready. The service asks for contact details — an email address or a UK postal address — plus your name, date of birth and nationality, given as they appear in your eVisa where those are the fields you are disputing, and one of a passport number, an expired BRP number, a GWF number, a UAN or a UKVI customer number. GOV.UK states the Home Office aims to fix most issues within 5 working days, with complex cases taking up to 15, and that you will be emailed if it will take longer or if more information is needed.

You do not have to do it yourself. GOV.UK confirms you can authorise somebody else — a legal representative, an employer or a colleague — to submit the report on your behalf, which is worth knowing if language, illness or being abroad is part of the problem.

Free help is now thinner than it was. The Home Office funded voluntary organisations to help vulnerable people set up accounts and link their eVisas, and its own publication records that this funding ended on 31 March 2026, redirecting people instead to free regulated immigration advice through the Immigration Advice Authority, to UKVI directly, and to the report-an-error service. Separately, the assisted digital service run by We Are Group for people who cannot use a computer or the internet covers a long list of application types — citizenship, settlement, the EU Settlement Scheme, family visas, travel documents — but GOV.UK states in terms that you cannot get help with your eVisa through that service, and points eVisa users to webchat instead.

Take regulated advice rather than informal advice. The Immigration Advice Authority is an executive non-departmental public body that regulates immigration advisers, runs an adviser finder and maintains a register you can search to check whether someone is authorised. Giving immigration advice in the UK without being regulated or legally qualified is an offence, so a check on the register is also a check on whether the person you are about to pay is committing one.

If the Home Office simply is not resolving it, escalate formally. The department's complaints procedure says it aims to respond within 20 working days and that if you are dissatisfied you can ask for the complaint to be passed to a more senior member of staff; beyond that, the route is through your MP to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. Complaints go to the Direct Communications Unit at 2 Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF. That log of dates, times and reference numbers you were told to keep earlier is what turns a complaint from a grievance into a case.