The government has launched a formal and anodyne-sounding “Consultation on reforms to social housing allocations“. It proposed a new series of bars to being allocated certain types of social housing, including a “UK connection test” which would be passed by being a British citizen, EEA citizen with equal treatment rights,...
Naturalisation is the legal process by which a non-British adult becomes a British citizen. An application has to be made to the Home Office and if the criteria set out in the British Nationality Act 1981 are met then the application will be granted and the person can attend a...
The short answer is “yes, criminals can be denied refugee status.” There is a moral dimension to the Refugee Convention. But the criminal offence or offending must be particularly serious in nature. The offending or behaviour must be serious in nature because denying refugee status to a person and sending...
A “returning resident” is a resident of the United Kingdom with settled status who returns to the country after a lengthy absence abroad. Ordinarily, when a person refers to “returning residents” they might be talking about a temporary resident who leaves for a short time, for example on holiday or...
The Free Movement website will be down over the weekend while it is updated. When it comes back up, hopefully on Sunday, it will look subtly different. We are updating the software behind the website for the first time since 2016. We’re not planning any major changes to the design,...
The Home Secretary must set out a lawful plan to completely end its use of hotels for accommodating lone refugee children. This is the conclusion of Judge Chamberlain in R (on the application of Kent County Council) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWHC 3030 (Admin). The case...
The “no recourse to public funds” condition is imposed on grants of limited leave to enter or remain with the effect of prohibiting the person holding that leave from accessing certain defined public funds, set out at paragraph 6 of the immigration rules. A person who deliberately claims public funds despite such...
The asylum system seems finally to have turned a corner: the asylum backlog is starting to fall. The backlog is the single most important problem with the asylum system. Unlike arrivals, it is something the government can control. It creates huge financial costs for the taxpayer. It sucks money out...
The Supreme Court has today held that Rwanda is not a safe country and that it would be unlawful for refugees to be removed there. The government’s appeal against the Court of Appeal’s judgment has been dismissed. Lord Reed, giving the court’s judgment, emphasised the non-political nature of the court’s role,...