Skilled Worker

Citizens UK publishes report on reform of UK’s citizenship pathway

Citizens UK has published a new report, ‘From Rooted to Recognised: Unblocking the Pathway to Citizenship’, which details issues with the current settlement and citizenship system and provides recommendations for both immediate and long-term reforms. The report also addresses related issues such as allowing all UK-resident children to receive child benefits regardless of their parents' origin, granting ‘settled status’ to long-term residents, reducing child citizenship fees, the lack of a fee waiver option for settlement applications, and highlighting concerns with the No Recourse to Public Funds visa condition.

Extensions to priority change of circumstances request service

On 21 November 2024, the Home Office issued an updated version of the Worker and Temporary Worker priority change of circumstance service guidance. The main changes to the guidance are the time when the ‘priority service’ is open for receiving requests every day being extended from 9am – 5pm to 7am - 5pm weekdays, and the maximum ‘priority service’ requests accepted per day moving from 60 to 100. The updated guidance also emphasises that applicants must ensure to include their organisation name (as detailed on their licence), sponsor licence number and priority request type in the email subject line. The other service, eligibility criteria, application process, processing times, and fees remain the same.

Priority pre-licence application slots limit removed, and CoS change

The Home Office’s sponsor guidance for the pre-licence application priority service has been amended on 22 November 2024 to delete the previous reference to there being a maximum of 30 priority service requests a day. This would suggest that there is no longer a numerical limit on these requests.

Immigration weekly highlights—21 November 2024

Welcome to the 21 November 2024 highlights from the Immigration team, which provides links to key news stories from the last week, as well as a round-up of new and updated content in Immigration.