5 years post-Brexit, EU’s ‘free movement’ into UK is still letting big numbers apply to settle - under EU rules

140,000+ applications per quarter being made under Home Office’s ‘EU Settlement Scheme’

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2025

2.3m applications received in 3½ years since the scheme’s deadline passed… and still they come

The closing date for applying to the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) in order to gain the right to reside permanently in the UK was 30 June 2021. What you about to read may shock you.

Background and Preamble

The EUSS was agreed by former PM Theresa May at the EU's insistence that it was their No.1 priority. Without their demands being met, they said they would not negotiate on other aspects of the UK's departure such as the future trading relationship.

By the scheme's closing date, 6,046,704 million applications had been received by the Home Office. This compares with the 3 million people from the EU which the public had been told - during the Referendum campaign - were residing in the UK.

Since the deadline, 2.3m more applications have been made… And they just keep on coming

It is now more than three-and-a-half years since the official deadline for the EUSS passed. In today’s report from the Facts4EU.Org think-tank we can reveal that in those three-and-a-half years a staggering 2,300,101 further applications from migrants under the EU’s scheme have been received by the Home Office, up to the end of last year (2024).

We know that a significant proportion of applications received after the closing date will be for a request to upgrade the settlement status the applicant has already been granted, but we don't know how many, as the Home Office do not supply this information. Our best estimate is around 40%. Even if it is a large number, it still would not explain the 1.5 million in other categories, which are continuing to be accepted for processing and - in case of non-EU nationals - have actually increased each quarter over the past year.

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‘The post-deadline EUSS gold rush’ - Part III of our ‘UK Mass Immigration from the EU’ series

Today’s report is Part III in our ‘UK Mass Immigration from the EU’ series. This is the last part which deals specifically with application numbers under the EUSS. We have already shown in Parts I and II that a total of 8.4 million applications had been received up until the end of 2024, and that 0.8 million of these had been received - under this ‘EU’ scheme - from non-EU nationals.

After today’s report on post-deadline applications, the next three reports in the series will analyse the total numbers of actual migrants approved since the scheme started on 28 August 2018. We will then provide the results of our weeks of research showing the various groupings of those who have been given the right to reside in the UK, with all the benefits this brings to them.

The timelines – How many applications per quarter since the deadline passed?

Below we show the timelines for applications per quarter since the Home Office seamlessly continued taking applications on 01 July 2021, after the deadline had passed the previous day. After the charts we then have more to say about the ‘Non-EU nationals’ and the ‘Family’ categories.

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Additional information for readers : Timelines, Family Members, non-EU nationals

The Home Office says “Joining family members may still apply after their applicable deadline if they can demonstrate reasonable grounds for the delay in applying.” The House of Commons Library goes further: “A few groups of people are eligible to apply to the EUSS later than 30 June [2021], notably people overseas coming to join family members in the UK.”

The ‘close family members’ - to use the term in the scheme - include spouses, civil partners, unmarried partners, dependant children and grandchildren, dependant parents and grandparents, and children born or adopted after 31 December 2020. (The date the UK finally left the EU.)

Who’s paying for this?

What follows does not appear in any official Home Office reports on the EU Settlement Scheme. The Facts4EU team discovered this as a result of weeks of in-depth research into all aspects of this subject.

The trigger was when we read this : “More than 540,000 vulnerable people have been supported to apply to the scheme by our network of grant-funded organisations across the UK.” This is despite the fact that the Home Office provides comprehensive layers of support itself to assist migrants in making their claims.

Given that we are told that immigration from the EU involved people coming to work rather than claim benefits, it seems surprising that more than half-a-million migrants have required free, fee-paid assistance from the State to pursue their claims.

Observations

No end to the EU's Free Movement?

Did the UK’s exit from the EU on 31 January 2020 mark the end of the EU’s infamous ‘Freedom of Movement’ rules? Quite clearly not. We would suggest that this is why this series of reports is so important. With mass immigration now a cause of such serious concern in the United Kingdom, we have been revealing the huge role that the EU has had to play in this.

With the current Labour government continually talking of a ‘re-alignment’ with the EU, it seems appropriate to show the public one vital aspect of what our EU membership caused – and what it is continuing to cause to this day. And with Government's apparent desire to enter into some form of 'Youth Mobility Scheme' for the under 30s, it is perhaps timely to inform the public of just what effect any form of free movement agreement with the EU might result in.

If we were to leave readers with one thought it would be this

Over 140,000 applications to the EUSS were received in the last quarter alone, six-and-a-half years after this scheme started. In just those last three months the Home Office received as many applications as the total number of illegal boat migrants entering the UK in the last six years.

But there is so much more to say…

The Brexit Facts4EU.Org team has more observations to make about all the various aspects of the EUSS than we have the time and space to list them. As we investigated each aspect of this series there have always been additional elements to each report about which we would have liked to have provided readers with more information.

An example amongst several from this report on the 2.3 million applications received after the deadline had passed relates to the final point in the report itself. This concerns the state-funded assistance given to more than half-a-million migrants under the scheme since the deadline passed.

Our further investigations have revealed more detail. If you would like us to produce a report including more on how the taxpayer has been funding a variety of organisations – paid for via the Home Office - to help individuals from other countries to gain settled status in the United Kingdom, please help to fund our work with a donation now. We would also want to include a section on some details of the legal activism – from the UK’s own lawyers and judges – that we have uncovered, to make the scheme more generous than it already is.

Coming up….

With this report we have reached the half-way point in this series. In the next three parts we will look at the all-important question: How many of all these applications relate to actual applicants and how many were successful, bearing in mind that some applicants could - and did - make more than one application?

Despite the often contradictory nature of the plethora of official reports and spreadsheets we have been trying to make sense out of, we will be able to bring readers a good summary of each of the various groupings that received permanent UK residence with access to all the rights and benefits of living in the World’s sixth-largest economy.

In collaboration with a former Cabinet Minister, we will also look at the implications of this mass immigration from the EU on the UK population as a whole.

If you think these reports are important,
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[ Sources: The UK Home Office | House of Commons Library ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Mon 24 Mar 2025

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