CYP Now - The price of British citizenship

There is increasing scrutiny of the high cost of a child registering their right to British nationality, writes Anita Hurrell, head of the Migrant Children’s Project at Coram Children’s Legal Centre

The £1,012 application fee is considered the biggest barrier to children realising their rights to British citizenship, with serious implications that go beyond a passport. Picture: Maksims/Adobe Stock

Which children born in the UK are British? The law is complex and many families are confused about whether or not they can apply for a British passport for their child. Up to 1983 the UK had birthright citizenship, whereby all babies born in the UK were automatically British. Since 2006, where a child is born in the UK to at least one British or settled parent, the child is automatically British. “Settled” means that the parent has no time restriction on their stay in the UK. For European families, this often means the parent needs to show that they had acquired permanent residence – for instance by working for five years – by the time their child was born in the UK. Others will need to show that they held indefinite leave to remain at the time of the birth.

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