AskCPAG Benefits for Migrants Handbook

This service includes the full text of the Benefits for Migrants Handbook, hosted on AskCPAG, searchable and linked internally so you can skip to the next piece of relevant information with one mouseclick. Subscriptions are one year in length, with the option of renewing for a further year. It is updated on a rolling basis throughout the year - a vital service post-Brexit.

This is a subscription for the online version of the Handbook. Alternatively, you can order the Handbook in print. 

CPAG’s Benefits for Migrants Handbook has firmly established itself as the leading text on social security entitlement for people who have come to, or who are leaving, the UK. Following the end of the post-Brexit transition period on the 31 December 2020, new rules have taken effect from 1 January 2021, which significantly change the benefit entitlements of migrants. The publication of the 13th edition of this Handbook has been timed to ensure advisers get the latest information on these changes.

Ongoing online updates to the Handbook cover future developments in 2022 and continue until the publication of Benefits of Migrants Handbook 14th edition, planned in November 2022. The ending of European free movement rights within UK law affects the benefit entitlement of European nationals who began living in the UK before the end of 2020 and those who arrived after, and the family members of both groups. The end of the transition period also affects the benefit entitlements of claimants who move to live in Europe and those who return to the UK after living abroad. The Handbook covers the details of these changes as well as any impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.

Information to help you establish the immigration status of your clients is provided in addition to comprehensive details on the benefit entitlements that result from that status, including specific rules that apply to refugees and others granted leave following an asylum claim. The Handbook is fully indexed and cross-referenced to both UK and European legislation and caselaw.

The online edition gives advisers access to the tool ‘Are you a “person subject to immigration control”?’. This tool enables advisers to establish, through a series of simple questions, if someone falls within this important definition and if so what this means for benefit entitlement.

A separate tool ‘Do you have a right to reside?’ enables advisers to identify whether someone has one or more rights to reside and gives information on whether each right to reside will satisfy that requirement in different benefits.

The Benefits for Migrants Handbook should be on the desk of everyone advising European and non-European nationals living in the UK, and claimants of all nationalities who have recently arrived in the UK or who are going abroad.