Why are you doing this? Haven’t EU nationals’ rights been sorted by the settled status scheme?

Previous work, on the EU Rights Project, showed that EU nationals faced significant obstacles to justice in the UK – and that was while the UK was still a member state. Now that the UK has exited the EU, EU nationals’ rights are likely to become even more complex and confusing, and potentially rather more precarious.

The settled status proposals deal with legal entitlements, but will result in a series of parallel immigration regimes, with different evidential requirements and processes, running simultaneously. EU/EEA nationals will have different rights according to the timing of arrivals and the timing of registration, and for third country national family members rights will vary according to which underlying EU right is relied upon in the first place. Different people will, during transition, be subject to the ‘old’ regime, and others to different aspects of the ‘new’ one. Mechanisms of redress and dispute resolution are not clear, with potential divergence between domestic and EU level enforcement. There will be decision maker confusion; there will be departments trying to make sense of simultaneous variegated regimes of rights; there will probably be large quantities of rapidly produced guidance. Things will go wrong – and many of them will be behind the scenes or under the surface of cases. 

What is second-tier advice and who can contact the clinic?

The EU Rights and Brexit Hub can provide advice and advocacy support to those who are working with EU/EEA nationals and their family members to access welfare benefits and public services. We are working primarily with charitable advice organisations, even if EU nationals only make up a small proportion of their clients, and with local council welfare and social housing advisers, MPs and their caseworkers.

The hub is nation-wide – so we welcome requests from across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Unfortunately, we are not set up to manage cases or provide advice directly to clients, but will be happy to signpost clients to organisations who may be able to help, and then consult us to support their work on your case.

What kinds of case are you interested in?

There are a number of avenues for support with settled status applications, and we are not seeking to replicate those. We are looking at cases involving EU or EEA nationals seeking to access public services – for example, through making claims or appeals relating to welfare benefits. We would also be interested in cases relating to access to public sector housing, healthcare, education, and other related services.

By way of some examples, we hope to help with:

• problems interpreting/understanding the law;

• decision maker error

• delays in decision making

• problems with evidencing rights (including problems posed by the digital nature of settled status)

• problems relating to decisions on a ‘right to reside’ to access benefits

• communication problems or obstacles faced by the client

• confusion created by cross-border movement

• direct or indirect nationality discrimination

• direct or indirect sex, gender, age or disability discrimination

This is not an exhaustive list! Some problems will be unexpected; we are interested in any kind of obstacle encountered. 

How do we contact you?

Our email address is law-eurightshub@york.ac.uk. Visit out consultation page to get more information.

How does Covid-19 affect your work?

For the moment it affects where that work happens, as we are operating remotely. Our case notes will be held in the clinic case filing system, which we can access remotely, and which has strong security measures built in.