Introduction

We are crowdfunding to bring an action against the Home Office for inordinate and unreasonable delays in processing the visa applications for a number of Ukrainian refugees. The applications were made in March 2022, and many are not completed.

Many of these Ukrainians are vulnerable and in difficult positions. They left their homes in Ukraine and many have gone to neighbouring countries. They are not wealthy people and many have completely run out of money or resources.  Applicants often are only the women and children in a family as the men are fighting in Ukraine. There are hundreds of mothers with young children, without resources, at risk of street homelessness, terrified about the fate of their fathers, brothers and sons, and stuck in a Home Office limbo

Who We Are

We are a group of sponsors in the Homes for Ukraine Scheme.  We helped Ukrainian citizens to apply under the programme.  Our Ukrainian sponsees all made their applications before the end of March, not long after the programme opened and we have all had applications that have taken 5 or 6 weeks or are still outstanding as we write today.

We were in different groups raising concerns about the length of time the process was taking, and a little over a week ago we joined forces to try to resolve the issue once and for all.

We have collated data on the number of outstanding applications and tried to engage with the Home Office but this has fallen on deaf ears, so now we feel we are left with no choice.

Katherine, Louise, John, Kitty

Home Office Inaction

None of the Ukrainian refugees we have sponsored have arrived in the UK.  In some cases all of a particular set of applications remain undecided.  In other cases, even more bafflingly, some family members have had their visas granted and others have not.  Clearly, no family in which a mother and, say, two children have been granted visas are going to come to the UK and leave a small child still awaiting theirs  in Ukraine, Poland or elsewhere.

We have discussed this matter extensively with other sponsors in the same position as us.  We became aware that some sponsors have successfully issued challenges -  called a pre-action protocol for judicial review - about the delay in their particular family’s cases.  A number of these sponsors were able to unjam the Home Office system in a matter of hours and get their visas issued.  Some of these Ukrainians have now arrived in the UK and are safe in their sponsor’s homes.  Others are arriving shortly.

We are aware from our own actions and those of others that everything possible has been tried.  We have talked to the media who have reported extensively on the frustrations and delays.  Some of us have contacted our own MPs.  Many MPs have been helpful in chasing the Home Office to find out what has been happening with applications.  The Home Office responses  to MPs have sometimes been misleading - they have said a decision has been made and it later turns out it has not been made - or they promise a decision will be made within a period of time and this does not happen; sometimes have just been stalling.

In some cases, even where initial steps have been taken and children without passports have attended at Visa Centres with their parents to register their biometrics, they have then been told there will be another significant delay in actually issuing the permission to travel.

It is impossible to get any sense directly out of the Home Office.  The ‘Helpline’, better known to us as ‘the line’ has staff who are often polite and friendly but they have no access to proper information about individual cases.  Emailing or telephoning any part of the Home Office is a fruitless exercise.

We never intended or even wanted to commence legal action.  All of us read the information about the scheme and wanted to help.  NONE of us ever anticipated this degree of confusion, frustration and inaction.

In many cases we are aware that sponsors have been trying to arrange B & B or hotel accommodation for their Applicant families.  This is expensive and difficult – obviously accommodation is in short supply and high demand in many of the countries neighbouring Ukraine.  Many sponsors simply cannot afford this huge extra cost.

Early Applications Ignored or Sidelined

What has particularly concerned us is that there are nearly a thousand applications we know of submitted in March which remain undecided in whole or in part.  The application process was particularly complicated then, it has been simplified to some degree since, and newer applications are being granted - while these older ones are sitting on someone’s digital desk and being ignored.  

We do not know why so many pre-31st March 2022 applications remain undecided.  There appear a couple of possibilities: Either the Home Office is prioritising newer applications because they are easier and faster to deal with and they can therefore boast about how many applications have been decided; or the programme is just so incoherent and disorganised that the Home Office are not dealing with the matters in any pretence of chronological order.  We do not know which of these explanations is correct and it also appears in some cases the Home Office may have lost uploaded documents.

We do know that in some of the hundreds of March cases outstanding, the Applicants have made new applications since then which have been granted quickly.  It therefore appears fairly clear that there is this cohort of probably thousands of cases from March which are simply not being processed.

What We Are Going To Do

What we intend to do, therefore, is to write a pre-action protocol for judicial review to the Home Office and challenge the significant number of cases which are outstanding for no good reason.  If necessary we shall have to apply for judicial review.

The judicial review we intend to bring if our pre-action protocol is not successful, is to challenge this policy or cohort of outstanding cases.  This case will therefore not only solve individual family’s problems but, we hope, force the Home Office to get a grip on this serious problem.  Individual challenges have been successful, but there are too many still outstanding.  And those individual challenges rely upon sponsors who have the resources and contacts to bring cases against the Home Office for their own Applicant families.  Many sponsors are not in this position.  

We have found a Barrister with long experience in public law judicial review immigration cases who has already dealt with a number of Ukrainians in similar positions.  We have also found a Solicitor with significant experience in the same area to act for us and to instruct the Barrister.

This will be a complicated action because it is challenging not only individual cases but the whole policy background, actions and inactions of the Home Office.

We are confident that we have a very strong case for judicial review on the combination of facts and law that exist here.

The process will be this:  We will have to prepare a number of witness statements and collate the data and information about the outstanding March applications. The Barrister will then write a pre-action protocol letter to the Home Office setting out the facts, the problems, the legal issues and our intention to apply for judicial review if we do not get a speedy and useful reply.  

If the pre-action protocol results in success, we will not have to take it any further.  If the Home Office does not get a grip on this urgent and potentially catastrophic situation, we will bring our action for judicial review and ask that it is considered urgently in light of the vulnerability of so many of the March Applicants.  

We are therefore crowdfunding in order to pay these necessary costs.  There are Court fees and a lot of legal work will need to be done very quickly.  The Solicitors and Barrister in question have agreed to undertake this work at generous reductions on their usual rate.

We therefore have an initial target to cover the pre-action protocol of £5,000 and a ‘stretch target’ of £15,000 in the event that we need to go for the full judicial review.

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