Davies - UK Supreme Court indicates that becoming a full-time employee elsewhere generally will result in a change in residence

The UK Supreme Court (formerly the House of Lords) has indicated that whenever an individual has left the UK to pursue full-time employment abroad, it is likely that he will be considered to have made a "distinct break in the pattern of his life in the United Kingdom," and thereby ceased to be ordinarily resident in the UK, notwithstanding that he or she may not have severed his or her family and social ties with the UK.

This position seems to be contrary to quite a number of Canadian lower court decisions respecting Canadian individuals who took a full-time job abroad but did not sever their Canadian personal ties (see, e.g., Glow, Mullen, Johnson, Gaudreau, Snow).  The test of individual residency has not been considered by the Supreme Court of Canada since the Thomson case (which is based, in part, on the same English jurisprudence, e.g., Levene, as that underlying this decision in Davies).  It is possible that the current Canadian judicial test, indicating that a requirement that an individual sever most of his or her social and family ties with Canada in order to cease to be a resident, is "pitch[ing] the requirement... at too high a level."

Neal Armstrong.  Summary of R (Davies) v. RCC, [2012] 1 All ER 1048, [2011] UKSC 47 under s. 2(1).