December 2018 Newsletter

Christmas is here and there’s good news all round. Citizens of EFTA countries and Switzerland are now included in the settlement scheme, the pilot will open to the public at the end of January and the citizenship form now makes allowances for applicants with settled status. What more can we ask for?

Notes from the EU Immigration Users Representative Group on the 17th  of December 2018

Private Beta 2 pilot update

There had been 18,000 applications, and 15,000 had been processed at that point. Every single case that had been decided, had been granted. No-one was refused, although some applicants were asked to provide further evidence.

The HO have learned a lot from the scheme and are making changes to improve their guidance and systems. They are keen to hear about any difficulties individuals encounter. Applicants are expected to communicate these directly to the HO when they occur, so they can be looked at to identify any faults in the system.

The Home Office have increased the size allowed for each uploaded document, to 6Mb per document, up to a maximum of 10 documents. You can upload more than 10 if you group uploads together to a maximum of 6Mb per upload. They are only interested in seeing the first page of documents such as bank statement, with the date, name and address.

New pilot due to start in January

A third private Beta Pilot will start towards the end of January 2019 and new Immigration Rules have been laid providing for this. This Pilot will be open to any EU national who has a passport and can use the online system. More locations will open around the country providing assistance, they are building up to a 100 locations.

They are still in negotiations with Apple in respect to iPhone and iPad, but they do not anticipate this being resolved before the full roll out in March.

Family members from outside the EU

It was confirmed that, once settled status is open to the non EU family members of EU nationals, those non EU family members will be issued with a Biometric document if they do not already have a Biometric Residence Card.

No deal

There was a discussion of what would happen in a no deal situation, as per the policy paper. The officials stressed that they were not anticipating a no deal situation. Questions were asked about differentiating between EU nationals returning to the UK who were residing here prior to the 29th of March 2019 and those coming to the UK for the first time between after that date. They stated that there were no plans to change the Rules at the border, and it was intended that anybody presenting an EU passport would be allowed entry. The Rules relating to EU nationals who come to the UK for the first time after the end of March 2019 in a no deal situation are yet to be finalised.