The change to the immigration rules on 11 April 2024 regarding how absences would be calculated in the long residence route initially caused a lot of confusion because the drafting […]
There is a lot that remains unclear about the Home Office’s introduction of eVisas, below we shed light on what we know so far about the roll out and use […]
Immigration law is constantly changing and the Home Office updates its guidance documents accordingly. Sometimes you will need to look at an older version of the guidance that applied at […]
On 10 April 2024 the Home Office introduced a fee waiver process for those applying to extend their leave in Appendix Hong Kong BN(O) however the new process introduces barriers […]
The Home Office has updated its “Allocation of asylum accommodation” guidance so that a list of people who were previously excluded from the Bibby Stockholm, Napier and the other ex-Ministry […]
This is our write up of the first of the Home Secretary’s recent dump of the much delayed reports from the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration. The one […]
A few days before the two-year anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the UK government announced a series of sweeping changes to the Ukraine schemes, giving just four hours’ […]
Having presumably learned from their much criticised mishandling of certain trafficking cases, the government published a statement yesterday stating that they have paused consideration of asylum claims from a certain […]
On 21 December 2023 the Immigration Minister published a letter setting out a concession for people who wish to make an application to the Hong Kong British National (Overseas) route […]
In Oluponle v Home Office [2023] EWHC 3188 (KB), the claimant was awarded £20,000 for 60 days’ false imprisonment. Several helpful comments were made on various Home Office failings during […]
In December 2022 the Prime Minister pledged to clear the ‘legacy’ backlog (claims made before 28 June 2022 when certain provisions of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 were brought […]
A new version of the Home Office caseworker guidance “Withdrawing asylum claims” has been published, halving the amount of time people are given to explain reasons for missing an interview […]
The Home Office has explained in newly published guidance ‘Asylum decision-making prioritisation‘ how they will decide the order for decision making of asylum claims. This provides some much-needed clarity to […]
Staff working at Brook House immigration removal centre were verbally and physically abusive towards the people who were detained, including the use of extremely racist language. There were 19 incidents […]
The Home Office annual report for 2022 has belatedly been published. It shows an additional £3 billion had to be allocated to pay for unexpected asylum system expenditure. An extra £1.6 […]
The Home Office may no longer be able to meet the rules it currently relies on to use the international aid budget to support people in their first year in […]
Bill Gates once said that your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. If the same applies to the Home Office staff who have the unenviable job of […]
The Home Office is increasingly treating asylum claims as being withdrawn. This seems to be a new policy intended to reduce the asylum backlog. The number of asylum decisions made […]
Two new Upper Tribunal cases emphasise the importance of the parties to an immigration appeal identifying and addressing all the issues in dispute. Both the cases were decided by a […]
We live in a reaction economy. The age of social media means that governments, companies, and others in the public eye are not ruled by accountants assessing their bottom line […]
The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration has now published a report on visit visa operations between December 2022 and January 2023 which confirms that overall, this area of […]
The government is right that the asylum backlog needs to be urgently addressed, but the Illegal Migration Bill will not tackle the backlog in any meaningful sense and could cause […]
A new report by the international aid spending watchdog has revealed that the Home Office spent one third of the UK’s international aid budget on domestic asylum costs, leading to […]
The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Neal, has expressed his frustration at the Home Office’s inability properly and promptly to address report recommendations in his comments published […]
The Home office has published new guidance introducing a streamlined process to deal with child asylum applications. The policy explained in the guidance apparently intends to help the Home Office […]
To try to reduce the asylum decision backlog, the Home Office has introduced a “streamlined” process, including a questionnaire to be completed, in English, by individuals from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Syria, […]
Quarterly immigration statistics released last week show the asylum backlog has hit a record high as 160,919 asylum seekers await an initial asylum decision, quadruple the number awaiting an initial […]
The Home Office is not beloved as an institution. Some consider it necessary. But no-one likes it. That seems to include not just migrants and their families but also many […]
Yesterday, the third annual inspection from the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) of ‘Adults at risk in immigration detention’ was published. On the same day, the Home […]
Almost five years after Amber Rudd committed to a review of individuals who had entered the UK under the Tier 1 (Investor) route, today, Suella Braverman provided the government’s final […]
Yesterday the Home Secretary faced questions in front of the Home Affairs Select Committee. Today the quarterly statistics on immigration were released by the Office for National Statistics. What do […]
Back in the heady days of 2019, journalist Jon Stone started what turned out to be a very long thread on Twitter. Over and over and over again, he wrote […]
At the now infamous Manston processing centre in Kent, conditions are dire. Home Secretary Suella Braverman has known for weeks about the situation and did nothing until the media stepped […]
On 3 November 2022, the latest quarterly release of statistics on modern slavery claims was published, covering 1 July to 30 September this year. During this period, 4,586 people were […]
It hasn’t been a great week to be the Home Secretary or a Home Office official. Since Suella Braverman’s statement to the House of Commons on Monday, there has been […]
There have been lots of different numbers and statistics relating to the UK’s asylum system mentioned over the last week. One of these is the backlog of people waiting for […]
An inspection report examining the use of hotels for housing unaccompanied asylum-seeking children has been published this week, but the findings make for unsettling reading. The report criticises the operation […]
The Home Office has agreed to review its policy Fee waiver: Human Rights-based and other specified applications, which provides guidance on the time limits for making human rights based immigration […]
We first heard of the Windrush scandal in early 2018, as a result of powerful investigative journalism. It stands for decades of injustice experienced by thousands, whose lawful existence in […]
Soul-searching in a large bureaucracy often manifests in well-meaning paperwork. So it is that the Home Office has published an ethical decision-making model. The document is intended to help staff grappling […]
