Isata Kanneh and Elinor Mattey explain the major changes made under the ‘earned settlement’ reforms and what this means for people in Wales
The final details of the new ‘earned settlement’ model were announced in the House of Commons on Monday by the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood. The announcement follows nearly a year of consultation on reforms that were first proposed last year.
What is Indefinite Leave to Remain?
Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR), also known as settlement or permanent residence, allows people to live, work and study in the UK without a time limit. It provides rights including NHS healthcare, access to the benefits system and the permanent right to work. These rights offer security and a foundation for building a permanent life in the UK.
What were the original proposals on earned settlement?
Stricter requirements to qualify for permanent settlement were first outlined in detail by the UK Government in November 2025. The stated intention was for most workers to require ive. Following consultation, the UK Government has dropped this element of the proposals, but the newly announced changes still mean longer waits for many people.
What was announced this week?
The UK Government has stuck to its plan to double the qualifying period for settlement from five years to 10 years. The new rules penalise people on lower incomes by basing eligibility on a person’s earnings and employment and allowing an easier route to settlement for wealthier applicants.
The new rules make some concessions for care workers, which the Home Office states is in recognition of the contribution of such workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposed 15 year-wait for lower-paid workers, including care workers, has been scrapped. Under this week’s announced rule changes, care workers who arrived in the UK before May 2025 and who earn at least £25,000 a year will be eligible for ILR after five years. About a quarter of care workers, however, whether or not they risked their lives in the COVID-19 pandemic, will have their qualifying period for settlement extended. They will be able instead to apply for a new five-year visa, meaning that any time they have already spent waiting for settlement will not count and their qualifying period will effectively start from scratch.
Wealthier visa applicants will be given a shorter route to settlement. Workers earning more than £50,271 a year will remain on the existing five-year route. This route will also remain open to people in certain public professions, including nurses, teachers and doctors. Those earning more than £125,000 a year will be able to apply after just three years.
For everyone else on a temporary visa in the UK earning less than £50,271 a year, the standard wait for settlement will be ten years. That means a decade of insecurity and uncertainty before being allowed to settle, with serious implications for the long-term financial security of individuals and families.
This week’s announcement also confirmed significant changes for people seeking asylum in the UK. The Home Office has announced that new safe and legal routes will be established and that refugees arriving through those routes will be eligible for settlement after five years. For refugees who arrive via other routes, the situation is very different. Even when granted refugee status, those who do not arrive through a Home Office approved route will face a 20-year wait for settlement, unless they work or study, in which case the settlement period will be 10 years. For people arriving by small boat or other “clandestine routes”, the wait will rise to 30 years. This means that someone who makes an asylum application at the age of 30 could be 60 years old before they can apply for settlement.
What does this mean for people?
Poverty
A longer standard qualifying wait for settlement will inevitably mean that more people remain in poverty for longer. People on temporary visas must renew their leave to remain periodically, usually every 30 months for those on a route to settlement. These renewals are expensive. People typically pay thousands of pounds each time they renew a visa, with the high costs of fees compounded by the health surcharge of £1,035, which must be paid for each year in which a person is applying for leave to remain.
During this time, most people on the ten-year route will also be subject to the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) condition, excluding them from many schemes designed to tackle poverty, such as discretionary housing payments and warm homes discounts, and leaving them unable to rely on the welfare system at times of crisis or financial hardship. Together, repeated costs and restricted support keep people and their families in a precarious position throughout their wait for settlement.
Access to justice
Wales faces a severe shortage of immigration legal services, as does much of the UK. The collapse of legal aid and the scarcity of immigration legal services in Wales makes it very difficult for people to navigate changes to the immigration rules or to find help to challenge negative decisions and exercise their legal rights. This disproportionately affects people on low incomes, who struggle to pay for legal advice or travel long distances to legal firms in other parts of the country. Without free-at-source or low-cost immigration advice, many people are unable to make applications to renew their visas or change status – applications that are essential to maintain their right to remain in the UK.
A longer settlement period will result in a much more difficult journey to settlement. There will be many more points at which someone is put at risk of failing to access timely immigration advice, failing to put in an application on time, failing to raise the large amounts of money needed to do so. The cost of remaining in the UK will be greatly increased. Anyone who fails to keep up their continuous right to remain will be in breach of the rules and will have their settlement period doubled again, to 20 years.
The Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, said yesterday:
It is only fair that those who are making the most valuable contribution to our communities are given the opportunity to settle earlier.
In reality, the most wealthy are being given the right to settle earlier, with “contributions” measured only in terms of financial earnings. People who have migrated to the UK contribute to their communities in many ways, often earning nothing for their work or their kindness, sometimes legally excluded from employment or barred by the salary threshold from gradually building a career.
“Fairness” must mean more than a rocky route to settlement that penalises people on low incomes while barring them from exercising their legal rights. The new settlement criteria will increase poverty and destitution and keep people in precarious financial situations that will last many years beyond the point at which they are finally granted Indefinite Leave to Remain. The impact on children trapped in this system will be profound. The UK government may have softened some of its plans for care workers, but for over 500,000 people already in the UK, the road to settlement has just got considerably longer and more difficult to follow.
Learn more about our work on Migration here.
Isata Kanneh is Head of Policy (Migration)
Elinor Mattey is Policy and Research Officer (Migration)