If you’ve seen that the English requirement for settlement is moving from B1 to B2, you’ve probably had one of two reactions. Either “that’s years away, I’ll think about it later,” or a flat sense of dread. Neither helps you actually get there.
So let’s make it concrete.
The number to work with
Moving up one CEFR level, from B1 to B2, is generally estimated at around 150 to 200 hours of focused study, depending on the estimate you use. That’s not 200 hours of passively watching English television or half-listening to a podcast on your commute. It’s active study: writing, speaking, being corrected, making mistakes and fixing them.
The current requirement for settlement is English at B1 level. The change to B2 is due to take effect on 26 March 2027.
200 hours sounds like a lot until you spread it out. That’s the whole point of this post: turning one big, vague number into something you can fit around a job, a commute, and a family.
What 200 hours looks like, depending on when you start
Here’s the same 200 hours, broken down by how much runway you give yourself.
| Time until your deadline | Roughly how many hours a week |
|---|---|
| 18 months | About 2.5 hours a week |
| 12 months | About 4 hours a week |
| 9 months | About 5 hours a week |
| 6 months | About 8 hours a week |
| 3 months | About 15 hours a week |
The pattern is simple: the earlier you start, the less any single week has to carry. Three months out, you’re looking at over two hours a day. Eighteen months out, you’re looking at 20 minutes a day, five days a week, with a bit more at weekends.
This is why starting early matters more than studying hard. It’s not about willpower. It’s about arithmetic.
Breaking 2.5-8 hours into a week that actually exists
Whatever number you land on, don’t try to do it in one sitting. A useful way to split a weekly target:
- Short daily sessions (15-30 minutes): reading, vocabulary, listening practice on the commute or during a lunch break. These add up fast and they’re the easiest to protect, because they don’t need a big block of free time.
- One longer session (45-60 minutes) once or twice a week: speaking practice, writing a paragraph, working through something that needs concentration rather than just repetition.
- A weekly check-in (10 minutes): looking back at what you covered and what still feels shaky. This is where most people’s plans quietly fall apart, so it’s worth protecting.
If a week goes wrong, and it will, don’t try to make up the lost hours all at once the following week. Just pick the plan back up. Consistency across months matters far more than any single perfect week.
Why this is worth doing now, not later
B2 is a genuinely higher bar than B1. It’s the difference between getting by in English and being able to discuss, argue a point, and follow something more complex without translating it in your head first. Reaching that level under pressure, in the final few months before a deadline, is a much harder way to do it than reaching it steadily.
This is separate from the Life in the UK test itself, which tests knowledge, not English level. But if you’re working towards settlement, the two often sit side by side on your to-do list. Treating them as two separate, planned pieces of work, rather than one looming deadline, tends to make both feel more manageable.
If the Life in the UK test is the piece of that to-do list you haven’t started yet, Haven gives you structured lessons and realistic practice so that part, at least, doesn’t need to compete with your English study time.