The Blog

The mechanics of a right to work check are the same whether you're checking an employee or a contractor: a manual document check, a Home Office online check, or a check through a registered digital verification provider. What changes for non-employees is everything around the check. You need to work out whether you're even the party responsible for doing it, add contractual protections if you're not the direct employer, and control substitution so the person turning up to do

The situation Our client was a single mother with several dependent children, living entirely on Universal Credit and Child Benefit. Two of her children, both born in the UK, were entitled to register as British citizens under section 1(4) of the British Nationality Act 1981 after having lived in the UK continuously for the first ten years of their lives. The combined Home Office application fee for both children came to £2,000 (£1,000 per applicant), a sum that would have co

At a glance The client. A US citizen (“the Applicant”) applying for entry clearance to the UK as the spouse of a British citizen (“the Sponsor”), who relies on Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and Universal Credit as their primary income. All identifying details, including names, exact dates and addresses, have been removed from this case study. The challenge. The Sponsor's income came entirely from disability related benefits and fell well short of the standard £29,000 mi

A single absence of 221 days threatened to break our client's ten-year continuous residence and derail their Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) application. By identifying the correct legal ground under Appendix Continuous Residence and building a complete evidential record, we secured an outright grant of settlement rather than a refusal or a fresh qualifying period. At a Glance The client. An applicant for Indefinite Leave to Remain under the ten-year long residence route, wh

The clients. A brother and sister, referred to here as A and J to protect their privacy, who came to the UK from Maharashtra, India in December 2015 as young children, dependent on their father's work visa. All identifying details including names, exact dates of birth, addresses and school names have been removed from this case study. What I did. I prepared and submitted registration applications for both children under section 1(4) of the British Nationality Act 1981, the ro

At a glance The client. A UK domiciliary care provider holding a Skilled Worker sponsor licence and employing a large, fast-growing workforce, including overseas staff on the Skilled Worker visa based across multiple locations. The provider asked us to run a mock sponsor compliance audit ahead of a possible UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) compliance visit. All identifying details including company name, licence number, payroll references and staff names have been removed from

For the past eighteen months, thousands of refugees and long-settled migrants have lived with a quiet but devastating message from the Home Office: how you arrived in the UK, even decades ago, could permanently block you from ever becoming British. In June 2026, that message started to unravel in the High Court. If you or a client have been refused citizenship because of illegal entry, this is essential reading. The Policy That Changed Everything In February 2025, the Home Of

You've been granted Indefinite Leave to Remain, congratulations. But what happens next, and when should you start getting ready to apply for British citizenship?