access to public funds for brit's wife and their child

Dear friends,

A friend of mine had applied for a settlement visa this year as a british citizen's spouse...and got it finally. But her visa says that she has no access to public funds. The question is wheather her child who is a british citizen also is entitled to public funds just as any other british citizen? It would be unfair otherwise....Please advise.

Regards,
Jama

There are no restrictions on the child, being a BC, getting access to public funds.

Just to expand upon what Smit has correctly written, there is no question of the child making any claim! But the mother's visa has the expected "No recourse to Public Funds" restriction, so it is important that she does not claim anything.

In particular, she must not be the claimant for Child Benefit. But her husband can be the claimant for Child Benefit and that would create no problem whatsoever.

As regards Tax Credits .... including Child Tax Credit ... this is claimed jointly by a couple living together. It would be wrong for the husband to claim that alone. But "small print" in the Tax Credits legislation means that the wife can be a joint claimant for Tax Credits without breaching her visa condition. That is, because she is married to a British Citizen, and accordingly someone who is not subject to immigration control, for Tax Credits purposes only she is also treated as being in the same position as not being subject to immigration control.

Not only that, because the Tax Credits application form asks for a NINO to be entered for each of the couple, if the wife does not have one, they will get one allocated at an early date even though she might not have started paid employment. Getting a NINO now rather than when she starts work in the UK must be a good thing.

Thank you Smit/John

I just passed on to her that her husband should apply for their child benefit and there should be no problem. Thanks again for your advice John. Another thing - she wants to study in the UK and a question arises here- if she has right to work but no recourse to public funds is there any possibility to be entitled to local home fees as a student at one of the UK Uni?

Many thanks,
Jama

Jama, as regards student fees, I am afraid she will not qualify as a Home Student for quite a while. For university or any degree level courses you are basically looking at a period of three years in the UK before qualifying for Home fees.

My wife, in the UK now for 4.5 years and naturalised as British, has just won a bit of a fight to get classed as a Home student for the Masters Degree course she will start later this month. She had to concede that IELTS needed to be taken and a suitable score achieved, and it was, but the college seemed to equate automatically that needing to take IELTS meant the person could not be a Home student. But as I say above, we have finally won that battle.

Thank you for all your help John. Congratulations by the way, I am glad you won this battle

Jama