On 21 November 2024, the High Court ruled that the Home Office’s use of the No Recourse to Public Funds (NPRF) condition is unlawful, again. You can read about other times this the NRPF condition has been ruled unlawful in our legal update blog here and here.

This case was about the Home Office’s system for deciding Change of Conditions applications. The High Court decided that the Home Office’s current system for deciding these applications is unlawful, because of long delays which are in breach of their duty to protect human rights.

The full judgment is available to read here. 

This short blog will explain the basics of the decision.

NRPF and Change of Conditions applications

People who are subject to No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) cannot access certain types of state benefits. This means they do not have a financial safety net to fall back on. You can read more about this in our NRPF Key Guide here.

NRPF is a default condition placed on visas. Many people on a variety of visas and immigration routes in the UK will have a NRPF condition on their visa, which is imposed automatically by the Home Office.

It is possible to make a Change of Conditions application to ask the Home Office to remove a NRPF condition and allow a person to access social security, housing or other benefits. To succeed in an application, you have to show that you are destitute, or at risk of becoming destitute.

We have information about Change of Conditions applications in our Toolkit guide on NRPF, which you can read here.

What did the court decide?

The Home Office’s evidence showed that it was taking an average of 10 weeks to decide a Change in Conditions application for someone who has permission to stay in the UK on the basis of their family or private life. 

The High Court found that the Home Office had made unlawful and irrational decisions to refuse Change of Conditions applications in certain instances. 

It also found that the Home Office had breached its duty to have regard for children’s best interests and breached its positive duty in upholding Article 3 of the ECHR (to reduce the risk of inhuman and degrading treatment). 

On the issue of delays, while the court did not impose specific burdens on the Home Office to make decisions within a specific timeframe, it found that the Home Office’s current system does not reach the bare minimum of the requirements upon it. The judgment found that the Home Office: 

‘does not have an adequate system in place to reduce, to a reasonable and proportionate minimum, the risk of inhuman and degrading treatment’ 

This is a significant judgment. It confirms what we know about the NRPF condition – that is a hugely damaging policy which is bluntly applied to millions of people in the UK. To learn more about the impact of NRPF, have a look and get in touch with Project 17’s United Impact campaign.

Congratulations to the team at the Unity Project, who support people to make Change of Conditions applications, and the legal teams at 3 Paper Buildings and Deighton Pierce Glynn for their success in this case.