FAQ

The Home Office has sent me a letter saying that my pre-settled status may be curtailed. I’ve been given 14 calendar days to prove my rights. What does this mean?  What should I do? 

If you have pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS), it is important that you continue complying with the ‘terms and conditions’ (also known as eligibility criteria) of pre-settled status. 

Broadly speaking this means:

• maintaining your continuous residence (see this FAQ) - in other words you need to make sure you don’t have too many absences from the UK.
• If you have status by virtue of being a family member of an EU sponsor who was in the UK by 31 December 2020 (so either you are a non-EU citizen, or you arrived in the UK on or after 1 January 2021), then you usually (but not always) need to maintain your family relationship. Obviously if you have a blood relationship such as being the child of your sponsor, then you will have maintained your family relationship, unless your sponsor has left the UK or has passed away. However, if your EU sponsor was a spouse, a civil partner or a durable partner then the end of your relationship can, in some circumstances, have an impact on your continued eligibility for EUSS status. See this FAQ for more information.
• not breaching the suitability criteria - for example a prison sentence of 12 months or longer, or multiple shorter prison sentences can break suitability criteria, or break continuous residence. Seek legal help if this applies to you.

But my pre-settled status decision letter doesn’t mention this at all!

Originally, when the Home Office granted pre-settled status they envisaged it would expire after five years, so the pre-settled status decision letters only stated that pre-settled status would be lost after a continuous two-year absence from the UK. The Home Office thought that if people broke their continuous residence, or were no longer a valid family member, these people would be unable to apply for settled status once their pre-settled status expired, so would either need to leave the UK or apply for a different type of immigration status.

However, after the Home Office lost a legal case in the High Court (see this FAQ for more details), they were forced to make changes to the EUSS so now pre-settled status cannot simply expire. Indeed, the Home Office is now automatically extending people’s pre-settled status by five years (previously two years) shortly before it is due to expire.

This means that the Home Office is now beginning to look at ways in which it can take pre-settled status away from people who have broken the ‘terms and conditions’ of their status, as described above.

So why have I received this letter now?

Given all the above, it is therefore possible that you might one day receive an email or letter from the Home Office in which they question your status. We see this happening in for example the following situations:

• Someone is applying for status under the EUSS as a joining family member - it appears the Home Office is possibly taking the opportunity to re-examine the continuing eligibility of the applicant’s sponsor, and so may send that sponsor an email/letter asking for evidence that they are still entitled to their EUSS status.
• Someone’s relationship has broken down, and either they or their ex-partner has told the Home Office about it (see https://www.gov.uk/visas-when-you-separate-or-divorce - but note that despite the wording on this page, there is no legal obligation on EUSS status holders to tell the Home Office about relationship breakdown).
• Someone is stopped at the UK border and questioned by Border Force officers who think that the person no longer complies with the requirements of pre-settled status under the EUSS (see the section “Grounds for cancellation of leave” in the EUSS Border Force guidance https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/eea-nationals-at-the-border-post-grace-period) 

The Home Office have also indicated that towards the end of 2025 they will start operating a more general policy of curtailing people’s status who they believe have broken their continuity of residence. 

So what should I do now that I’ve received this letter?

We recommend that you do the following:

• Contact the Home Office as soon as you possibly can, and ask them for more time, explaining why you need more time - for example because you would like to find a lawyer, and/or it will take you time to collect your evidence, or because you need to find someone to help you understand the email and what to do.
• Contact someone who is authorised to give legal advice and help you respond fully to the Home Office’s email / letter. See our Useful Links page for a list of organisations that can help, some of them will be able to help for free. It is important to make the strongest representations possible, and a good legal advisor will help with this.
• Start collecting any relevant evidence that you have of your continued residence in the UK and your continuing eligibility for status under the EUSS.
• Report your case to us at https://the3million.org,uk/report-it, so that we can collect as much evidence as possible about Home Office practices of removing status.

I’ve also just had an email telling me my pre-settled status has been extended! What’s going on?

The Home Office is currently automatically extending (by five years) people’s pre-settled status a month or so before it’s due to expire. This is (currently) an automated process which doesn’t look at whether people are entitled to their extension or not.

So it can be extremely confusing, and very distressing, to receive an email one day saying your pre-settled status has been extended, and to receive another one shortly before or after saying the Home Office is considering taking your pre-settled status away.