The Journal
What changed
The UK biometric residence permit, the card most non-UK nationals carried for years, has been replaced by the online eVisa. Your immigration status now lives in a government account rather than in your wallet, and you prove it to third parties with a share code generated online.
Why a Schengen consulate cares
Every Schengen application from the UK has to show that you live here lawfully, and that your permission to be in the UK lasts beyond the date you come back. That evidence is one of the quiet load-bearing documents in the file: it is what establishes you may apply from the UK at all, and it feeds the question every officer weighs, whether you will leave the Schengen area and return to your life here.
Which form of proof a consulate expects can vary, and checklists have not all caught up at the same speed. Some ask for the share code, some still describe a residence permit card. Working from the current checklist for your specific centre, rather than a generic list, is the way through.
Before you apply
Generate the share code close to submission. A code generated months ago serves nobody.
Check your leave outlasts the trip. If your UK permission expires around your return date, resolve that question before you spend money on an application.
If you hold indefinite leave to remain, say so plainly. It is the strongest available answer to the returning question, and it belongs in your cover letter in exactly those words.
And the trap that catches people every year: neither a BRP nor ILR has ever exempted anyone from Schengen visa requirements. Your passport decides whether you need a visa. Your UK status only decides where you apply from.
How the letter around that evidence gets written is covered in our cover letter guide.