The Home Office is creating unnecessary additional work and delays in change of conditions applications

Delays in the Home Office’s processing of change of conditions applications (used to lift the no recourse to public funds restriction from a person’s grant of leave) are a serious problem and a rare example of where the Home Office is regularly on the losing side of litigation challenging delays (including this damages claim and a recent case where the lack of a process for expediting applications was held to be unlawful). A report from The Unity Project, with support from Praxis, Ramfel and the Refugee and Migrant Centre, ‘Change of Conditions Applications Data Analysis and Evidence 2023-2024: Requests for Further Information‘ indicates that much of the delay is self-inflicted by the Home Office.

All the organisations involved in the report have noted a steady increase in the Home Office insisting that further evidence is provided after a change of conditions application has been submitted. The Unity Project received requests for further information in 15% of the applications they submitted in 2020, and in 2024 this happened in 49% of cases.

Each of these requests adds around another month to the time take to decide the application. The report notes that processing times have increased from 29 days to ten weeks as at November 2024 (as confirmed by the Home Office in litigation). And let’s remember that these are often cases involving destitution and/or children living in unsuitable circumstances.

The requests are often unnecessary, as is evidenced by the examples in the report of applications being granted even where the further information is not provided.

The following recommendations were made:

1. Transparency – The Home Office should publish data on the number of RFI’s issued nationally, and the outcomes of their corresponding applications.

2. Prompt decision-making – RFI’s should not seek updates on applicant’s circumstances which are necessitated only due to an unreasonable delay in decision-making.

3. Compliance with policy guidance – RFI’s should only be issued when an applicant has failed to provide information or evidence required within the application form, or an adequate explanation of why they have not provided it, as per the policy guidance.

4. Evidential flexibility – If an applicant has given an explanation for not providing information or evidence but the Home Office finds this to be inadequate, the RFI should clearly explain why this decision has been made, referring to the specific circumstances of the case and taking account of the principle of evidential flexibility in published Home Office guidance.

5. Specificity – RFI’s should make reference to the specifics of the applicant’s case and previous submissions, not general pro-forma requests.

Trust the Home Office to turn a useful process into an unhelpful one. The over use of requests for further information is certainly prevalent in change of conditions applications, but I think (from my experience) it is also a problem in this Home Office FHR team generally and it would be good to see these recommendations applied more widely.