Employers warned over flaws in Home Office digital residency system

Problems with digital residency permits has led to EU nationals living in the UK being rejected by employers, landlords and mortgage lenders.

The issue has arisen when EU nationals have tried to upgrade their status from pre-settled to settled once they have lived in the UK continuously for five years.

One business immigration legal specialist told Personnel Today that the flaw was “hugely concerning” and that it was yet another issue that employers already besieged by Brexit-related issues had to contend with.

On application for the upgrade the confirmation that they already have pre-settled status is removed from their online permit, so they are unable to prove they are legally in the UK and leaving them unable to use public or financial services.

The Guardian newspaper has published details of Hungarian and Italian nationals who have had house purchases jeopardised because of what the Home Office helpdesk called a “technical glitch”.

The Home Office told the newspaper: “They can ring the settlement resolution centre to request their account shows their pre-settled status if they would prefer this.”

But this has proved problematic with long waiting times to get through and the online system also does not show when applicants are appealing a rejected application – instead just stating that an application has been refused.

Campaigners claim that unlike other overseas migrants, EU residents are discriminated against because they are not given a physical copy of their residency permit. Instead they have to prove their legitimacy with a share code that allows service providers to view their status online.

Anne Morris, business immigration lawyer and MD at DavidsonMorris, was highly critical of the Home Office’s approach: “Without ‘pre-settled status’ visible on the record, employers who are not aware of this distinction could erroneously interpret that the individual is not eligible to work, which could result in them taking action to dismiss the individual,” she said.

“For those workers lawfully in the UK under the EU Settlement Scheme, the flaw is hugely concerning since they can only rely on the Home Office database to prove their working status.”

She added that the issue also required highlighting among employers because there are almost 2.3 million pre-settled status holders in the UK. Many of these would eventually become eligible to apply for full settled status once they attained the requisite five-years continuous residency, so it was important that employers understood the information they were being given on the database.

Morris said: “Employers are advised that when conducting right to work checks, ‘certificate of application’ does count as proof of right to work, since it indicates that the individual holds pre-settled status and is awaiting a decision on a full settled status application.”

For Morris the problems were “another example of the Home Office failing to deal with the detail at the expense of workers and their employers”.

She noted: “Employers have already had to contend with multiple changes to the right to work scheme in recent months, with new acceptable documents for EU workers from 1 July and multiple postponements to the end of the Covid scheme.”

The Guardian quoted a Home Office spokesperson: “The EU settlement scheme provides people with a secure, digital status which future-proofs their rights. This can be easily shared with employers, landlords and other organisations, including financial institutions, such as banks, to prove an individual’s rights and access services.

“Between October 2019 and end June 2021, the online checking service has seen more than 640,000 profile views by organisations checking immigration status. Guidance for individuals and checking organisations is widely available on gov.uk.”

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