Election period and Settled Status Scheme

Hi There,
I was wondering if now that a General Election has been called and that Parliament has been dissolved whether decisions on settlement scheme will be put on hold until the new Government is in place?

The C_abinet guidance for civil servants state: Decisions on matters of policy on which a new government might be expected to want the opportunity to take a different view from the present government should be postponed until after the election, provided that such postponement would not be detrimental to the national interest or wasteful of public money.

The election does not (or should not) impact Settled Status applications in any way.

The purdah rules (which the C_abinet guidance essentially codifies) generally ensure that no new policies can be announced by the government once the election is called (to prevent the government from having an undue advantage in the elections).

It does not stop the implementation of policies that were already announced and brought into force before the election period.

Reminds me of this clip from Yes, Minister.

secret.simon wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 06, 2019 9:03 am

The election does not (or should not) impact Settled Status applications in any way.

The purdah rules (which the C_abinet guidance essentially codifies) generally ensure that no new policies can be announced by the government once the election is called (to prevent the government from having an undue advantage in the elections).

It does not stop the implementation of policies that were already announced and brought into force before the election period.

Reminds me of this clip from Yes, Minister.

Thank you for your prompt response Simon. You are right in theory, but I still fear that civil servants will be less keen on making decisions that a new Government might not agree with. MPs are no longer able to send letters to Home Office on behalf of affected EU constituents. On the other hand now that parliament is not sitting officials might have more time to work on the settled scheme without getting bombarded by ministerial correspondence, etc.

Further update. I've sent an email to the resolution centre and this is what they responded:

"We can confirm that applications to the EU Settlement Scheme are still being processed."

All the best.