Following on from last year’s award of £203,995 made to a victim of abuse at Brook House, it seems the Home Secretary has missed the deadline of 29 September 2024 to make payment to the claimant, meaning that thousands more in interest is now payable. The conduct of pretty much...
A care home operator has successfully challenged the Home Office’s decision to refuse a defined certificate of sponsorship request on the grounds that the care home could not provide official contracts for guaranteed hours of work to show that the jobs were genuine. The High Court’s decision in Hartford Care...
Practice Manager The Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens (PRCBC) is seeking to recruit a self-motivating and committed Practice Manager to manage and hold responsibility for PRCBC’s ongoing office management, legal administration, and financial administration operations. The post holder is expected to be at the core of...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! The Home Secretary has named her preferred candidate as the next Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration – John Tuckett, who is currently the Immigration Services Commissioner. It’s over to the Home Affairs Select Committee now, who will carry out a pre-appointment hearing before...
Once a charitable organisation has been granted a licence under the Charity Worker route, it will be able to begin sponsoring workers under this route. The work needs to be an eligible type of work and the applicant needs to meet various requirements in order to be eligible for sponsorship...
Following on from the Review of Civil Legal Aid and concession of a judicial review last year, the Lord Chancellor announced in November 2024 that “subject to consultation” legal aid fees would finally be increased. That consultation was published on Friday and will run until 21 March 2025. The consultation...
The Home Secretary’s appeal in a deprivation case has seemingly backfired as the Court of Appeal has held that the deprivation process being operated, where the affected person is not given an opportunity to make representations against the decision, is procedurally unfair. The case is Secretary of State for the...
The Home Office has recently updated its guidance on the streamlined process for children’s asylum applications. This policy was initially introduced to help with the asylum backlog in 2023, the streamlined process has now been in place for almost two years and is no longer restricted to applications lodged prior...
The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal in a case involving a refusal based on an allegedly fraudulently obtained English language test certificate. The case is Chowdhury v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 36. The appellant entered the UK as a Tier 4 (General)...
The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal where it was argued that there had been procedural unfairness in a refusal of further leave to remain because the appellant had not been expressly told that his employer’s sponsor licence had been revoked. The appeal actually stemmed from refusal of a...
Appendix Statelessness replaced Part 14 of the immigration rules in January 2024. It provides a pathway for stateless people to obtain leave to remain in the UK. The application is free of charge and leads to settlement after five years. The Home Office guidance on statelessness “Permission to stay as...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! The OISC rebrand to Immigration Advice Authority happened last week. The timing of all this is not amazing given the amount of time that organisations are currently wasting trying to navigate the new online portal process introduced in October. Problems reported by people...
The Home Office will soon start automatically upgrading those who hold pre-settled status under Appendix EU and are now eligible for settled status. This is being done to finish implementing the decision R (Independent Monitoring Authority for the Citizens’ Rights Agreements) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022]...
In Chaudhry v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 16, the Court of Appeal has confirmed the correct test to be applied in appeals against decisions of the Secretary of State to deprive a person of citizenship pursuant to section 40(3) of the British Nationality Act...
The government has announced increases to some Home Office fees. There is no set date for the increases as the draft regulations will be debated and need to be approved by both Houses. Full details of the proposed changes are set out below. It was also announced that people in...
A health care worker who was detained after being encountered by immigration enforcement while serving customers in a convenience store has been unsuccessful in a judicial review challenging the decision to cancel her leave, detain and remove her from the UK. The case is R (Andrews) v Secretary of State...
In January 2024 the immigration rules were changed and statelessness family reunion was brought into Appendix FM. The new rules make no special provision at all for the families of stateless people and treat them in the same way as any family member of any other sponsor applying under Appendix...
It’s goodbye to 2024 in this month’s podcast, with Sonia and Barry wrapping up December. They spend a bit of time discussing eVisas at the beginning of the podcast, before moving on to asylum and trafficking where issues around the quality of decision making have been raised in a couple...
The Home Office has settled the judicial review claims that seek an independent Article 3 ECHR compliant inquiry into events at Manston in 2022. The claims were brought by individuals detained at Manston in autumn 2022 when there were widespread reports and concerns around overcrowding and very poor conditions, and...
The Administrative Court has set some boundaries and given a warning of potential sanctions to the GLD regarding the withholding of charter flight details in removal cases. The case is R (Jasseh) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWHC 47 (Admin). The claimant was issued with removal...
The Home Office has published updated guidance on “Temporary permission to stay: considerations for victims of human trafficking or slavery” that applies to reconsiderations requests of permission to stay decisions under that guidance, effective from today. A comparison of the changes (using this process) shows that the changes are on...
The Immigration Advice Authority, formerly known as the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner or ‘OISC’, is a governmental body established by the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 to regulate the provision of immigration advice and services throughout the UK. The Immigration Advice Authority has around 60 staff. The Immigration...
The Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner, or OISC to everyone who knew it, is being renamed from today as the Immigration Advice Authority. A colourful new logo is also being deployed. There is not a huge amount to say about it other than it is a pain. It is...
The government published a number of significant changes to their guidance for work sponsors on 31 December 2024 and 1 January 2025. The affected guidance includes: Although several guidance documents have been updated, in many instances these updates relate to the same changes and are to reflect updates elsewhere in...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! The Times reported last week that Professor Brian Bell, chair of the Migration Advisory Committee, supports people in the asylum system being allowed to work in any role after waiting six months for their claim to be decided. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise given...
The domestic worker route is a common trafficking route and below we look at how to identify whether a domestic worker is a victim of modern slavery. Domestic workers who live overseas can apply for a visa to visit the UK for up to six months with their employer as...
The Home Office has published its evaluation of the pilot scheme expanding the use of electronic monitoring of people as a condition of their immigration bail. The Home Office’s pilot monitored two groups of people on immigration bail. The first group was people who were subject to electronic monitoring and...
The Charity Worker route is for voluntary workers aged 18 or over who wish to come to the UK to do work for a recognised charitable organisation. Work must be unpaid and fieldwork which contributes directly to the achievement or advancement of the sponsor’s charitable purpose – for example, in...
The UK has two sponsored work routes for religious workers: the T2 minister of religion visa for those with a key leading role in their faith-based organisation or religious order in the UK, and the temporary religious worker visa for those who support the activities of religious institutions in the...
A mother and her severely disabled child have been successful in obtaining a mandatory order for the Home Office to provide them with suitable accommodation as part of their asylum support. The case is R (AYW & Anor) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2024] EWHC 3291 (Admin)....
The Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland has dismissed an appeal challenging refusal of Schedule 10 accommodation on the grounds that the applicant did not have a bail address, which is what she was asking for by making the Schedule 10 application. The situation endorsed by the Court of Appeal...
The Electronic Travel Authorisation scheme was first announced in the March 2023 Statement of Changes to the immigration rules HC 1160. This post explains what the scheme is, who needs an electronic travel authorisation, and how to apply. The relevant immigration rules are found in Appendix Electronic Travel Authorisation and Appendix ETA...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! It may be a brand new year but the same unresolved issues from 2024 continue to roll on. The first is of course eVisas, and we are now past the point where any remaining biometric residence permits have expired. The latest update is...
In the case of A.R.E. v. Greece (application no. 15783/21) a chamber of the European Court of Human Rights has concluded that there were “strong indications” that there was an unlawful systemic practice by Greece of returning people arriving in the Evros region to Turkey. The decision related to events...
An unregulated adviser, Sebastian Valencia Jefferson, has pleaded guilty to 11 counts of providing unregulated immigration advice and services in breach of section 91 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. Jefferson was the sole director and shareholder of Proxima Consulting Group Ltd and he also pleaded guilty on the...
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg handed down judgment in two separate cases in December addressing the subject of family life between adult family members outside the “core” nuclear family of spouses, partners, parents and minor children. The court confirms that “additional elements of dependence, involving more than...
