The Upper Tribunal has said that when the Court of Session is transferring judicial reviews to the tribunal, a decision should be made by the court on permission before the matter is transferred. The case is R (EB) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Scotland; Transfer of claims)...
Panicking about a Christmas present for the human rights lawyer in your life? Landmark Chambers have you covered with the excellent “The Law and Practice of Human Rights”. This is the first (presumably of many) edition and is a huge achievement that was turned around in an impressively quick period...
The Home Secretary has lost her appeal to the Court of Appeal in a case where she sought to restrict the ability of people to, effectively, appeal the deemed withdrawal of their asylum claim and cessation of asylum support by the Home Office to the Asylum Support Tribunal. The case...
This is one of those real train wrecks from the Home Office, where you may want to make yourself a large cup of coffee and read through the whole judgment. It features a person being wrongly told by the Home Office to make a No Time Limit application, followed by...
Today the Home Secretary has announced that Gaon Hart has been appointed the new Immigration Services Commissioner and will head up the Immigration Advice Authority, taking over from a no doubt very relieved John Tuckett who has been doing both that role and the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and...
The Migration Advisory Committee is clearing its desk ahead of the holiday break, publishing not one but two reports today. The first is the review of the salary requirements for work visas, where the committee has recommended keeping the general threshold at £41,700 and that a single new entrant rate...
The immigration skills charge is an additional fee payable by a sponsoring employer when a certificate of sponsorship is issued prior to a worker beginning their employment. The sponsor is required to pay the immigration skills charge and cannot pass liability onto the sponsored worker. Doing so could risk revocation...
Training Manager Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA) Location: Hybrid. Primarily remote with one weekly hub day in London. Working arrangements may change. Salary: £33,000-£35,00 Hours: 35 hours/week Contract: permanent Closing date: 3 January 2026 ILPA is a charity and professional membership body working to improve immigration, asylum and nationality law....
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! The best question that someone put to us at last week’s webinar on earned settlement was along the lines of how will the Home Office communicate to people that all of a sudden the rules have been changed on them and they are...
Sonia Lenegan has decided to move on as Editor of Free Movement with effect from 28 January 2026. Sonia has done an incredible job in her time here. She has published or republished an article every single day other than holidays, many of which she has written herself, often at...
In the case of Secretary of State for the Home Department v Khera [2025] EWCA Civ 1571, the Court of Appeal has given guidance on the interpretation of GEN 3.1(1)(b) of Appendix FM of the immigration rules. GEN 3.1(1)(b) is significant for applicants who cannot meet the financial requirements under...
The High Court has declined to order the release of a man in a case where there have been delays in his emergency travel document being issued so that he could be deported. The court did, however, order that bail be granted if the latest attempted deportation also failed for...
The High Court has ordered the Home Secretary to grant indefinite leave to remain to a man who has held discretionary leave to remain for 15 years, first granted under the pre-July 2012 policy. The Home Secretary had tried to rely on a conviction that pre-dated the first grant of...
In July to September this year, the number of appeals received by the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) increased by 123%, to 30,000, compared to the same period last year. Disposals (the number of concluded appeals) increased by 50% to 15,000 and the tribunal’s total open caseload increased by...
The Electronic Travel Authorisation scheme was first announced in the March 2023 Statement of Changes to the immigration rules HC 1160. The first stage of the scheme launched in October 2023 and it was then gradually rolled out in phases. So far the scheme has not been fully enforced to allow for...
The National Audit Office has published their report “An analysis of the asylum system“. The report identifies “four key enablers needed for an effective, value for money asylum system”. These are: a whole system approach, addressing fundamental barriers, timely, robust, shared data and a resilient, strategic approach to capacity and...
It seems it’s currently the Labour government’s turn to fervently and endlessly push the “fixing immigration once and for all” boulder up the very tall hill of British politics, as it inevitably rolls back down when it encounters reality. We’ve now had a few weeks to digest the “earned settlement”...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! On Wednesday this week a Council of Europe meeting will take place at which there is expected to be discussion around “reinterpreting” article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Because of the reporting I have seen around this, and will no...
Statement of changes to the Immigration Rules: HC 1491 has just been published. It is the seventh (!!) statement of changes we have had this year. It is thankfully a short one. Visit visa requirement for Nauru: 3pm today Effective 3pm today, nationals of Nauru will no longer be able...
The Court of Appeal has dismissed the case of an Iranian man seeking asylum on the basis of sur place activity, namely his political activity after arriving in the UK. The case is OM v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 1585. The appellant’s asylum claim...
What a month. Sonia kicked off the podcast with a run through of the major policy proposals which came out in November, including the changes to refugee settlement periods and a look at the earned settlement proposals (though not in too much detail as she is doing a full webinar...
Humans for Rights Network has published a new report “You can’t stay but you can’t go” – State violence at the UK-France border, evidencing the levels of violence perpetrated on people who are attempting to cross the border. The report notes that 2024 was the deadliest year ever at the...
When clients come to us, a key part of our role, as immigration legal advisors and advocates, is to listen sensitively and carefully to them: to what they have to tell us and to the particular threads of their lives that are relevant to their legal claim. Equipped with this...
The requirements for remaining in the UK under the Windrush scheme are outlined in the Home Office’s casework guidance. For the child of a Commonwealth citizen who was settled in the UK before 1 January 1971 the guidance requires that the applicant has been continuously resident in the UK since...
The latest of the – apparently now annual – immigration and asylum Bills has completed its journey through parliament, as the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 received Royal Assent yesterday. You should read Colin’s write up of the Bill as first published here for an overview of the...
It appears that the Home Office has started writing out to Syrian refugees who have pending settlement protection (SET(P)) applications. I know this is causing a lot of fear and worry and so I have tried to explain what is happening and give a bit of guidance on what to...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! Some earned settlement updates from the past week. First of all, the Home Secretary tweeted that the illegal entry penalty will not be applied to people who have been recognised as refugees. Thanks to Jon Featonby for spotting and flagging up that one....
The High Court has conducted a detailed analysis of what constitutes a “non-genuine vacancy” in R (Prestige Social Care Services Ltd) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWHC 2860 (Admin). In doing so, the court introduced a new analytical framework for assessing whether a role is genuine....
The Civil Legal Aid (Procedure and Remuneration) (Amendment) Regulations 2025 have been laid before parliament today and will come into effect on 22 December 2025. The regulations will amend schedule 1 of The Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013. Some of the main changes are set out below. Old initial...
An applicant has successfully challenged a refusal to grant him indefinite leave to remain on the grounds that he did not meet the continuous residence requirement, after his leave was wrongly cancelled in 2014 when the Home Office alleged that he had obtained an English language test by deception. It...
This post is based in Manchester providing face to face and online legal immigration advice and representation to people across North West England. GMIAU operates a hybrid work pattern with a minimum of 2 days per week to be spent in the office once the training period has been completed...
The Court of Appeal has made clear that Part 5A of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which sets out the public interest considerations when considering article 8 in a deportation case, applies to decisions on revocation of a deportation order when the applicant is outside the UK. The...
The quarterly immigration system statistics covering the period to September 2025 have been published. As highlighted in the title of the post, I have looked at quite a few of the areas in light of last week’s proposals and I am particularly concerned as to whether even the Home Office...
The Court of Appeal has reiterated that for adult siblings to be able to establish family life for the purpose of article 8(1) there is a requirement for “additional elements of dependence, involving more than the normal emotional ties”. The court found that these additional elements did not exist in...
