We are seeing a significant number of changes being made within the immigration system at present. As well as increases to the salary and income thresholds, we are due to see increases to a number of application fees. Here, we consider the key upcoming changes.
Recent fee increases
On 4 October 2023, we saw an increase in the application fees for the majority of UK immigration and nationality applications. The government also announced in October 2023 an increase to the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS) which came into force on 6 February 2024. This saw the IHS fee increase by a huge 66%, setting this at £1035 per year for adults and £776 per year for children, students, and those under the Youth Mobility Scheme route.
Since these fee increases, further changes to application fees are set to take place yet again throughout the year.
Further fee increases throughout 2024
The Immigration, Nationality and Passport (Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2024 will bring in further fee increases this year.
The explanatory memorandum provides a justification for the fee increases:
“4.1. These Regulations amend fees charged across visa, nationality, Border Force, and passport applications in order to increase the level of income generated through those fees. This supports the department’s wider objective of achieving a substantially self-funding migration and borders system. It further supports an objective that the costs are met to a significant degree by contributions from the users of the system, reducing reliance on taxpayer funding.”
There has been significant concern regarding Home Office fee increases given the potential impact this will have on families and businesses going forward.
What are the key changes?
4 April 2024
Immigration Salary List
The Shortage Occupation List was replaced by the Immigration Salary List (ISL) on 4 April 2024. The 20% salary reduction currently applied to shortage occupations will be abolished under the new ISL. The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) is yet to review the salaries in the ISL in line with increased salary thresholds. We discussed the new salary increases in this article.
10 April 2024
Permission to stay applications
There will be fee changes to certain applications for permission to stay, and these will include:
- An increase from £1,500 to £1,636 for Skilled Worker and Global Business Mobility (Senior Managers & Specialists) applications where the Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) is issued for more than three years.
- A fee waiver for applicants applying for permission under Appendix Hong Kong British National (Overseas). This will be applicable to individuals who, during their last permission, had the restriction of no recourse to public funds removed. If such applicants are in receipt of public funds and are able to show they cannot afford the fee, they will be exempt from paying the £180 application fee.
British citizenship
There will also be a fee increase for attending British Citizenship ceremonies. The fee will increase from £80 to £130. This therefore means that applicants who are required to attend a citizenship ceremony will pay a total of £1,630 when submitting their application. Where applicants prefer to attend a private ceremony, there is a further fee payable for this, and applicants are to contact their local councils for further details.
Visit visas
There will also be a slight increase in the application fee for two-year visit visas, which are due to increase from £400 to £432.
The above changes are set to take place from 9am on 10 April 2024.
11 April 2024
The standard passport application fees for adults will be increased from £82.50 to £88.50, and from £53.50 to £57.50 for children. Applications made by post will be increased from £93 to £100 for adults, and from £64 to £69 for children.
24 July 2024
There will be a 20% increase from £1,048 to £1,258 for applications for permission to stay, including those made under Appendix FM. During this time, there will be transitional provisions available for specific cohorts. For example, where an applicant makes a request for a fee waiver before 9am on 24 July 2024 and that request is refused, they will still be permitted under the transitional provisions to pay the lesser fee (in this case they would pay £1,048).
These increases are intended to align with the costs of processing and delivering the immigration, nationality, and passport services as set out by the explanatory memorandum.
There continue to be regular changes in the immigration rules at present, you can keep up to date with these changes and our commentary here.
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