After many years of concerns being raised by NGOs working with asylum seekers, the Home Office has significantly revised its age assessment guidance following a Court of Appeal finding that its policy regarding age disputes was unlawful. Age disputes are a significant problem facing young migrants. Many children seeking protection in the UK are unable…
The Home Affairs Select Committee has published a report on the EU settlement scheme in which it calls for better legal protection for applicants, especially vulnerable people like children. The report is based on expert evidence from charities, local authorities and legal experts, as well as evidence from the Home Office and Home secretary. Coram…
Coram Children’s Legal Centre (CCLC) has today welcomed this week’s judgment from the Court of Appeal finding Home Office policy regarding young asylum seekers and age disputes to be unlawful. Age disputes are a significant problem facing young migrants and Kamena Dorling of CCLC, as co-chair of the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, provided a…
The Court of Justice of the European Union in this case considered the position of children placed under guardianship in the Algerian Kafalah system. The Court decided that such a child can be treated as a family member for the purpose of EU free movement law. SM, known as Susana in the UK courts, is…
Coram Children’s Legal Centre (CCLC) has today joined Citizens UK, Let Us Learn and others to call for the Home Office to stop making a profit on children’s immigration and citizenship applications, on the day the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) publishes his report on fees. CCLC welcomes the ICIBI’s report and…
In a major win for campaigning organisations, the Home Office will not be raising most immigration and nationality fees for the 2019/20 financial year. The Home Office may have declined to raise fees in line with its usual practice because of the impending publication of a review of Home Office fees, due in March 2019.…
Coram Children’s Legal Centre (CCLC) welcomes the publication of both the long-awaited review and the government’s plans for the future of legal aid and other legal support. The review and action plan contain several significant announcements relating to children’s access to justice.
This week the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS) increased by 100% to £400 per year, despite concerns from Coram Children’s Legal Centre and others that this will have a severe negative impact on children and young people who have grown up in the UK but do not yet have settled status. What is the Immigration Health Surcharge…
Coram Children’s Legal Centre has achieved a ranking in leading legal directory ‘Chambers and Partners 2019’ as ‘Recognised Practitioner’ in the category of UK-wide Education: Individuals
Let Us Learn and Coram Children’s Legal Centre, working together on the ‘We Belong’ campaign, welcome today’s pledge from Labour to end the current ‘rip off’ of immigration application fees by reducing them to closer reflect the actual cost price of processing applications. As noted in the speech by Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott, many…
This week that more than 8 million pupils go back to school in England. Coram Children’s Legal Centre argues that children’s access to free school meals and schools’ access to funding for disadvantaged pupils should never hinge on immigration status. In May 2018, in response to news coverage in The Guardian which stated that children…
There are over half a million European national children living in the UK, 38% of whom were born here. Non-EU children currently struggle to regularise their immigration status in a system which is complex, expensive and for which there is no free legal advice. For the past year, Coram Children’s Legal Centre has been calling…