Submissions

We have responded to the UK government consultation on Family Returns: Reforming Asylum Support and Enforcing Family Returns (pdf). The government is currently considering the responses to the consultation. 

The consultation outlines the government's plan to: 

• Implement significant reforms to Home Office and local authority support that have been legislated for in schedules 11 and 12 of the Immigration Act 2016 (part one)
• Review when physical interventions may be used when a family is subject to an enforced return (part two)

If implemented as proposed, the changes to Home Office and local authority support will result in:

• The withdrawal of Home Office support from asylum-seeking families who become appeal rights exhausted (ARE)
• A reduction in the availability of Home Office support for asylum-seeking adults and families who are ARE and have a barrier to return 
• The transfer the responsibility for supporting asylum-seeking families who become ARE from the Home Office to councils (and health and social care trusts in Northern Ireland), in what could be a significant number of cases
• Councils in England being required to provide support to destitute families and some care leavers without lawful status, including those who have become ARE following an unsuccessful asylum claim, under a new legal framework set by the Home Office rather than under existing child welfare legislation, creating a two-tier support system

We cannot support the implementation of the changes as they are proposed when our recommendations, most recently set out in our 2024-25 report on local authority support for households with no recourse to public funds, have not been responded to by government and the changes are likely to give rise to more funding and service pressures. 

Read our responses to the consultation:

• ADCS and NRPF Network joint response (pdf)
• NRPF Network supplementary response (pdf)
• NRPF Network answers to online questionnaire (pdf)

The NRPF Network submitted written evidence to the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee inquiry into settlement, citizenship and integration in January 2026.

As with our previous submissions to the Home Affairs Committee, we set out evidence on the potential impacts of the Government’s proposed reforms to settlement routes on people with no recourse to public funds and on councils.

We highlighted that longer settlement routes increase the risk of financial insecurity and destitution for NRPF households, and are likely to place additional pressure on local authority social care services, who may be required to provide financial support and accommodation to prevent poverty and homelessness. Over time, this could result in rising costs for councils as more households remain subject to NRPF for longer periods.

Read our evidence submissions.

The UK government has proposed to increase the settlement qualifying period for most immigration routes from 5 to 10 years and to apply a 'no recourse to public funds' condition on people who are granted indefinite leave to remain. Alongside these changes, it intends to implement an 'earned settlement' model where people will have reductions or increases applied to their standard qualifying period based on factors that the government has decided demonstrate a person's economic and social contribution.

The proposals are a significant change to the UK's immigration system and will make obtaining settlement more difficult for most people, including work visa holders and people with family in the UK, and impossible for people who are unable to work or have a low income. Read more about the proposed earned settlement scheme.

The government has consulted on some aspects of the proposals. The consultation closed on 12 February 2026 and the government is currently considering around 130,000 responses. 

Read our response to the online consultation questionnaire, which has been informed by feedback from councils and our steering group.

We have also submitted a joint written response with the Association of Directors of Children's Services. 

In our responses, we highlight that the proposals will not promote the integration of residents but instead will lead to:

• More people being unable to maintain their financial resilience whilst subject to the NRPF condition for lengthy periods and needing to repeatedly fund costly leave to remain applications
• A greater need for children's and adult social care to provide accommodation and financial support to alleviate homelessness and destitution when people remain excluded from benefits for lengthy periods
• Entrenched inequalities within local communities as the scheme disproportionately affects several groups, including women, single parents, people with disabilities or long-term illnesses and carers
• Children, including British citizens, experiencing long-term disadvantage

The NRPF Network submitted written evidence to the Home Affairs Committee inquiry into routes to settlement in December 2025.

We outlined the potential impacts of the government’s proposed reforms to settlement routes on NRPF households and local councils. We provided evidence that longer settlement routes heighten the risk of financial insecurity and destitution for NRPF households and increase the likelihood that local authority social care services will be required to provide financial support and accommodation to alleviate poverty and homelessness. Councils could see rising costs from supporting more NRPF households in the future.

Read our evidence submission.

The Home Affairs Committee has since published its report on examining the government's proposed settlement reforms. The Committee acknowledges the NRPF risks associated with longer settlement routes, and has made a number of key recommendations that reflect those we set out in our evidence submissions to the inquiry. These include:

• making grant funding available to councils who are providing support to NRPF households
• not imposing penalties that would result in settlement pathways being extended as a consequence of accessing benefits
• not increasing settlement pathways for individuals already on the ten-year route
• increasing grants of leave for people on family and private life routes from 2.5 years to five years, to reduce the risks associated with repeated applications to renew leave

In July 2025, the Joint Committee on Human Rights launched an inquiry into the human rights of children in the social care system in England.

The inquiry will examine how well the human rights of children in England are protected in the social care system, with a particular focus of children in care and relevant wider aspects of the system. 

We submitted written evidence highlighting how the Children Act 1989 provides a vital safety-net to protect the human rights of families and care leavers with no recourse to public funds who are unable to rely on the mainstream welfare and housing systems when they are experiencing destitution, deep poverty or homelessness, and the councils face delivering this support.

In 2025, the Home Affairs Committee launched an inquiry into funding for tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG). This follows their recent broader inquiry into VAWG and the National Audit Office’s (NAO) report on the issue.

The inquiry aims to examine the funding available to public, voluntary, and community sector organisations for VAWG services. It seeks to understand funding decisions, evaluate outcomes, and gather opinions on future government funding priorities for this area.

The NRPF Network submitted written contributions in April 2025, highlighting concerns about the lack of funding to assist migrant survivors of VAWG. We noted the insufficient resources for councils to meet statutory duties under the Children Act 1989 and the Care Act 2014, and the restrictive eligibility criteria of the Migrant Victims of Domestic Abuse Concession (MVDAC).

The government has established a new child poverty taskforce to develop a strategy to tackle child poverty in the UK. In a policy paper about forming the strategy, the UK government states that it aims to bring about 'an enduring reduction in child poverty in this parliament, as part of a 10-year Strategy for lasting change'.

We submitted written evidence to the child poverty unit to demonstrate that children within families that have no recourse to public funds can experience deep poverty and destitution as a result of immigration restrictions, and that councils play a significant role in alleviating this by providing accommodation and financial support under section 17 of the Children Act 1989, and equivalent legislation in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We also make a number of policy solutions that could increase household incomes and improve financial resilience for families with no recourse to public funds, and would ensure that councils are better assisted by government to effectively safeguard and promote the welfare of children who are experiencing deep poverty or destitution.

Read our evidence submission (pdf). 

The Education Committee has reopened its inquiry into children's social care in England, which began before the last general election. The scope of the inquiry is broad and includes examining factors that are causing the increase in demand for children’s social care, the reasons behind the rising cost of children’s social care for local authorities, and ways to mitigate rising costs. 

In January 2024, we submitted evidence to demonstrate that immigration restrictions preventing people from accessing benefits and local authority housing assistance leads to a demand for child in need services, specifically accommodation and financial support provided under section 17 of the Children Act 1989, and that this results in additional unfunded costs for councils. We recommended that the government can mitigate this pressure on social care budgets, and more effectively safeguard and promote the welfare of children, by providing funding to councils and by addressing policies and immigration processes that can cause destitution and lead to families being supported by children's social care on a long-term basis. We updated our evidence in January 2025, as our recent data shows that the need for such support to alleviate homelessness and destitution is increasing and the costs to children's social care of meeting this need are also increasing. 

Read our original evidence. 

Read our updated evidence. 

In July 2024, the Department of Health and Social Care consulted on the eligibility criteria for the Healthy Start scheme.

Currently, families with no recourse to public funds can only access the scheme if they have a British child or a partner who is in receipt of a qualifying benefit. We submitted that the current eligibility rules discriminate against single parent families and that opening up the scheme to all pregnant women and families, regardless of immigration status would help to reduce child poverty, promote the well-being of children and minimise the impact of financial insecurity often experienced by people with no recourse to public funds. 

Read our response to the consultation (pdf).