Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what are the reasons stated for the refusal of settled status or pre-settled status for the 16,600 applicants who have been refused to up to September; and how many failed applicants fall into each category of refusal used by the Home Office.

The latest published information to the end of June 2020 shows that of 3,060 EU Settlement Scheme refusals, 99% were refused on eligibility grounds and 1% were refused on suitability grounds. The latest figures can be found on the Home Office’s ‘EU Settlement Scheme statistics’ web page available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics.

Further analysis of EU Settlement Scheme refusals to the end of September 2020 will be published in the upcoming quarterly release in November 2020.

Many of the eligibility refusals relate to cases that had been under consideration for several months and, in most cases, had been subject to repeated unsuccessful attempts to obtain missing information or evidence from the applicant.

The Home Office cannot assess a person’s eligibility for settled status until they make an application to the scheme, and therefore cannot state how many of those granted pre-settled status will be eligible in the periods sought.

A person granted pre-settled status can apply for settled status as soon as they qualify for this. They will be eligible for settled status once they have completed five years’ continuous residence or where other criteria for eligibility for settled status without that length of continuous residence are met.