Benefits for migrants

On this page

• Online handbooks
• Articles
• Tools and templates
• Legal test cases
• Other information
• Training courses
• Early warning system

Online handbooks

Information on the benefit rules affecting people who have come to or are leaving the UK in our online handbooks:

Welfare Benefits Handbook (for subscribers):

• Chapter 56: Coming from abroad: immigration status
• Chapter 57: Coming from abroad: residence rules
• Chapter 58: Going abroad
• Chapter 59: European Union co-ordination rules

Benefits for Migrants Handbook (for subscribers):

• Benefits for Migrants Handbook 

Articles

Our most recent articles about benefits rules for migrants from our Welfare Rights Bulletin:

• Right to reside after AT (April 2024)
• Refugees, UC and the DWP (February 2024)
• A guide to dignity? (December 2023)
• Still unsettled but no longer undignified? (February 2023)
• Benefit changes for Afghans and Ukrainians (June 2022)
• A CTC retro-fix for refugees – who stands to benefit? (April 2022)
• Pre-settled – still unsettled? (February 2022)

Tools and templates

Tools

Our tools to help you work out benefit entitlement:

• Are you a ‘person subject to immigration control’?
• Do you have a right to reside?

Judicial pre-action protocol letter templates

Our judicial review (JR) pre-action protocol template letters for advisers relating to:

• EUSS settled status or application pending
• EU pre-settled status
• the habitual residence test
• refugees

For copies of the JR template letters, advice about whether JR is the appropriate route, and for help with adapting the templates, contact our Judicial Review Project ([email protected]).

Legal test cases

Some of our recent test cases:

• The Court of Appeal has refused the Secretary of State permission to appeal an Upper Tribunal decision which held that an EEA national with pre-settled status can, in some circumstances, rely on the benefits awarded to their UK-citizen partner to establish a right to reside as a self-sufficient person: SSWP v WV (UC) [2023] UKUT 112 (AAC), SSWP v Versnick and Another [2024] EWCA Civ 1454, 29 November 2024.
• A Norwegian national with pre-settled status has been held to have a qualifying right to reside for the purposes of a joint claim for UC both as a self-employed person (on account of her having taken steps to set herself up as self employed at the date of her claim for UC) and as a self-sufficient person: SSWP v VB and AD [2024] UKUT 212 (AAC), 13 August 2024.
• Destitute EU nationals with pre-settled status can rely on EU Charter of Fundamental Rights to obtain UC: SSWP v AT (AIRE Centre and IMA Intervening) [2023] EWCA Civ 1307, 8 November 2023. The Supreme Court refused the SSWP's application for permission to appeal this decision on 7 February 2024.
• Following our successful test case regarding universal credit advances for those awaiting a national insurance number, amending regulations came into force on 1 April 2024 which reverse its effect, see:  R (Bui) v SSWP [2022] UKUT 189 (AAC); [2023] EWCA Civ 566, 25 May 2023.

Other information

More information on benefits for migrants and refugees:

• Benefits for resettled Ukrainians
• Benefits for resettled Afghans
• Benefits for new refugees
• ‘No recourse to public funds’, ‘person subject to immigration control’ and benefit entitlement
• Rights to benefits and tax credits for European nationals
• EU citizen guide to claiming benefits in the UK 

Training courses

Find out about our training courses on benefits for migrants:

• Training courses: benefits for people from abroad

Early Warning System

Our Early Warning System gathers information and evidence on the impact of changes to the benefit system. Send us details of cases:

• Contact the Early Warning System team