Calais ruling: Key questions resolved

Following an intervention by Coram Children’s Legal Centre (CCLC), the Home Office has confirmed that children and young people who were brought to the UK in 2016 and 2017 as part of the Calais camp clearance will now have a shorter wait before getting permanent status, known as indefinite leave to remain or settlement, and no fee to pay.

Who are these young people?

Following the closure of the refugee camps in Calais in 2016, and following public pressure, the UK government agreed to relocate some of the unaccompanied children who had been living there to the UK. In total, 769 children were transferred from Calais between 17 October 2016 and 13 July 2017. Some of these children joined families in kinship care arrangements, but many others were taken into the care of English local authorities.

What status were they given?

Unlike through the resettlement process, where a refugee is granted status upon arrival, the unaccompanied children transferred from Calais were told to apply for status by claiming asylum once they arrived in the UK. An unknown number were offered refugee status at the end of this process. Others were granted a form of status called “section 67 leave”, named after section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016. Some children and young people, however, were granted neither of these forms of status, but were already in the UK. The Home Office decided to grant these children and young people a new form of leave called “Calais leave”.

What is Calais leave?

Calais leave was designed as a 10-year route to settlement, with an initial grant of leave of five years which would need to be renewed before that status expired. It was not entirely clear how young people would renew their status, what fee would be payable to the Home Office, or whether they would also need to pay the Immigration Health Surcharge (an up-front charge of £1,035 per year of visa being renewed, totalling £5,175 for a five-year grant of status).

After 10 years of continuous leave, young people would eventually have become eligible to apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR), starting in 2026. While an ILR for a person with refugee status is fee free, young people with Calais leave would have to pay a £2,885 fee to the Home Office to apply.

What changed?

Following an intervention by Coram Children’s Legal Centre and representations from the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, the Home Office announced in March 2024 that young people with Calais leave would be able to apply for ILR after five years’ status in the UK, and not 10. They also confirmed that the application would be fee-free and that any fees already paid would be refunded. This change will bring a significant benefit to a small number of young people including many care leavers.

What happens next?

The Home Office is now due to write to everyone affected and ask for some information via a form before considering them for a grant of indefinite leave to remain. This is extremely welcome news for this small group whom the government brought to the UK as children without their families.

As grants of Calais leave began to be issued in 2018, and lasted for five years, it is thought that many young people who were granted this form of leave have already seen it expire. In correspondence with CCLC and others, the Home Office stated that it believes most young people put in a further leave to remain application before their leave expired, and thus avoided becoming undocumented. However, the Home Office has not confirmed how it will treat those individuals who have already overstayed their leave.

www.childrenslegalcentre.com

Points for practice

• The Home Office will now be contacting people previously granted Calais leave to assess if they meet the suitability criteria and to make arrangements for a grant of indefinite leave to remain. Care leavers may be alarmed by this process.

• Where help is needed to respond, it should be given by a regulated immigration adviser.

• It is really important to know and to keep a clear record of the immigration status of all non-British children in care and care-leavers, and of the date that status expires.

• Social workers and personal advisers should take a proactive approach to helping looked-after children and care-leavers to resolve outstanding immigration and asylum issues. Failure to do so risks serious consequences including destitution and the risk of removal from the UK and is a safeguarding issue.

• Children’s services departments should make active approaches to care leavers who may have been granted Calais leave previously to ensure that they have legal representation. This is particularly acute for any care leaver whose status may have expired without a renewal application being made in time.

• It is also critical that any young person who may have been granted Calais leave who now holds a criminal record has a legal representative, either through legal aid or through the local authority paying private solicitor fees.