In order to improve the service Free Movement provides to both members and casual readers I have made a number of changes to the website in the last year. I have recruited an assistant and then also CJ McKinney as deputy editor. I touched on these in the recent annual review.

My assistant and CJ provide a far better and more consistent service to members and readers than I was able to achieve on my lonesome. On top of that, much of the content for the blog is now commissioned and paid-for and we have been embarking on a programme of updating older content and training courses and adding new courses.

Over the next few weeks and months we will be experimenting with adding more multimedia content.

The days when the only expense for Free Movement was my own time have therefore long gone; all of this work has a direct financial cost. The site is funded principally through membership subscriptions and I am hugely and immensely grateful to the members who have signed up and trusted us to provide value for their money.

For several years I have been relying on a “leaky” paywall to encourage regular users of the website to become members in order to support the time and costs that go into generating the content. The idea was to make the content freely available to casual and occasional readers but to ask regular users to contribute. I wanted to keep as many posts as possible freely available, particularly those relevant to members of the public seeking reliable immigration information.

Several regular readers have openly joked with me in person about the ways in which they circumnavigate that paywall. Unfortunately, it isn’t funny.

To maximise the benefits of membership and encourage regular users to join, access to most older Free Movement blog posts is now limited to members of the website. Some readers will already have noticed that if they are not logged in as members, older Free Movement content is now “locked” and unavailable. The rules governing access are:

• All new blog posts will freely be available for 30 days.
• The 15-article paywall also continues to apply.
• Most blog posts are locked for non-members after 30 days.
• Some of the more important and widely read older content will be excluded from the content locker.

Membership is available from only £20 per month plus VAT on a monthly basis or £200 plus VAT annually. Group membership for groups of 10, 20 or 50 users is also available.