Lace Law's Response to Earned Settlement

Over many years of working in the UK's immigration law sector, we have witnessed several key changes to the Immigration Rules. The government's latest proposal to fundamentally change the way in which migrant's can settle will impact millions of people, now and in the future. This post serves as a transparent disclosure of our firm's response to the consultation, which began on 20 November 2025 and closes today on 12 February 2026. Reports suggest over 130,000 responses have been submitted so far. It remains to be seen how quickly the proposal will be implemented, and whether major reforms will come at the same time or incrementally, but many expect the Home Office will deliver the final changes in April 2026.

Having reviewed the proposal in full, our primary concerns relate to, but are not limited to, whether and how transitional arrangements will impact migrants who are already on a route to settlement. There should be legal certainty for these people, but also future migrants to clearly understand what their settlement period is going to be, how it may be impacted, and the ways in which they can demonstrate how they meet the requirements. We strongly believe that those already on a route to settlement should remain on the same qualifying period required when their permission to stay began. While we accept there is no automatic right to settle in the UK, a moving of the goalposts for these migrants is inherently unfair as it changes the terms to which they originally agreed in good faith. Many important life decisions may have been made by migrants who had one eye on their settlement date. To extend these people's settlement period is not what this proposal should be supporting.

A fair approach which does not include an automatic character-based exclusion or disproportionate penalties based on public funds access should be considered. We believe a balanced approach should be taken for migrants based on the length of their sentence and time passed since the sentence was completed. Contributions and integration measures should be given due weight and reductions should not be based on strict national income thresholds, with wider regional averages being a possible alternative.