UK child citizenship fees prompt legal challenge to Home Office

Date: 25th July 2018
Category: Civil Rights and Freedoms

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A judicial review is being sought of the Home Office which will challenge the fee that is charged for registering a child as a British citizen. The current fee is £1,012, which is a 51% increase since 2014.

The administrative cost of processing a citizenship registration is £372, and the rest of the fee is taken as profit by the Home Office. The Home Office state this profit is intended to offset other, unrelated immigration costs.

The registration fee applies to all children including children living in poverty, disabled children, and looked after children. Many children who must apply and pay the fee have lived in Britain for most of their lives or were born in the UK. Some children are also unaware that they are not British and have only discovered this when applying for university or university funding.

Amnesty has previously highlighted the increasing costs of citizenship applications and has called on people to take action to raise awareness of the issue amongst MPs and call on a reduction in fees and a waiver for families on lower incomes and looked after children.

A judicial review is now being sought by the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens and asks the Home Office to:

• Set the administration fee at no more than the judicial cost;
• Introduce a fee waiver for those children that cannot afford the fee;
• Provide a fee exemption for children in local authority care.
• Read more about this here.