Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans her Department has to grant frontier worker status to people (a) presently working in the UK, (b) who can prove a previous employment history at a UK employer and (c) who will be working on strategically important projects in the UK defence and infrastructure sectors.

The Citizens’ Rights Agreements protect those EU, EEA and Swiss citizens who were frontier workers in the UK by the end of the transition period at 11pm on 31 December 2020 and who continue to be so.

The UK’s frontier worker permit scheme, which has been open to applications since 10 December 2020, allows those protected frontier workers to obtain a permit, free of charge, as evidence of their right to continue entering the UK as a frontier worker after 30 June 2021.

There is no deadline by which protected frontier workers must apply for a permit, though it has been mandatory for non-Irish frontier workers to hold a frontier worker permit to enter the UK for work from 1 July 2021.

Where an overseas worker is not protected by the Citizens’ Rights Agreements, the new points-based immigration system provides routes for skilled workers and specialist services suppliers. Such work visas are typically issued within three weeks, making the UK system one of the fastest visa services in the world.