We're challenging the Home Office's 'granted in error' policy

Our lawyers have sent the Home Office a legal warning letter over a policy that lets pre-settled status simply expire, or strips settled status holders of their right to bring family here, with no decision, no proportionality assessment and no right of appeal.

Support our case on Crowdjustice here.

The problem

Millions of EU citizens made the UK their home before Brexit, working, studying, raising families and contributing to communities. Under the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS), we were told our rights would be protected. For a growing number of people, that promise is being broken.

The Home Office has begun telling people that the status it granted them years ago was apparently granted by mistake, claiming that they apparently never qualified in the first place. Nobody is accused of lying, and is affecting people from different nationalities. It's simply that a caseworker looking at the same papers today would reach a different conclusion. When that happens, the Home Office doesn't take the status away. Instead it just lets it run out, or tells people they can no longer sponsor a family member..

This creates a significant issue for those with pre-settled status. If the Home Office decides you were correctly granted status, but have since stopped qualifying, it has to write to you, hear your side, weigh up whether taking your status away is proportionate, and give you a decision you can appeal. If it decides you never qualified, none of that happens. Your status stays valid until the day it expires. At that point though it is just gone, and you're considered to be in the UK unlawfully. No right to appeal. No proportionality assessment. People who built their lives here in good faith just left without any opportunity to argue their case.

For those with settled status - they get to keep it but their right to sponsor a family member is immediately removed. Again without a right of appeal or proportionality assessment. This is causing immense stress and is tearing families apart.

Worse still, we're seeing this policy applied to people where there was no mistake at all when their status was first granted. They met the requirements, and they were properly granted status under the EUSS. Years later, the Home Office is now saying the grant was made by mistake, even where it  clearly wasn't.

The Independent Monitoring Authority - the watchdog set up after Brexit to oversee citizens' rights - has told the Home Office that this policy may be incompatible with the Withdrawal Agreement. The government hasn't accepted the criticism, and the practice continues.

“I find this situation deeply frustrating and misleading, as the Home Office granted me pre-settled status in 2020 without flagging any issues with my documentation at the time. This gave me a false sense of security that my status was valid, only for it to be used as grounds for refusal years later.”

"My life and my family are here. I have a wife and a daughter who was born in the UK, and we have built our family life here together. The possibility that my immigration status could affect my ability to remain in the UK, as well as potentially affect my wife and daughter's future status, causes me considerable worry and uncertainty. I consider the UK to be my home, and the possibility of having to leave the life and connections I have built here after so many years is extremely concerning to me."

The first formal step towards court

Our lawyers at Wilson Solicitors LLP have now sent the Home Office a "pre-action protocol (PAP) letter". This is the legal warning shot that has to come before a judicial review. It sets out why we say the Home Office's 'granted in error' policy is unlawful, and gives the department 14 days to put it right.

If they don't, we may have to go to the High Court.

We're working with Wilson Solicitors and barristers from Garden Court Chambers to establish that the Home Office cannot sidestep the safeguards of the Withdrawal Agreement simply by letting status expire, or by declaring that someone no longer has rights under it. A decision that takes away rights someone already holds is a decision in substance - whatever the Home Office chooses to call it.

If we win, the Home Office will have to do what it does in every other case: weigh up what its decision means for the person, and give them a right of appeal before taking their status away.

We cannot fund this legal action alone though. We need your support to ensure we can see it through. Support the case here.