The Home Office has published its response to the House of Lords Modern Slavery Act 2015 Committee report, outlining plans for significant reform of the UK's approach to modern slavery.

The Home Office has responded to the Independent Monitoring Authority for the Citizens’ Rights Agreements (IMA) report, ‘An Inquiry by the Independent Monitoring Authority into delays in issuing decisions on applications to the EU Settlement Scheme’. The report found that the Home Office failed, in some cases, to decide applications under the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) within a reasonable timeframe. The response sets out the Home Office’s position on the IMA’s findings and recommendations.

The Home Secretary, Rt Hon Shabana Mahmood MP, has written to the Chair of the Justice Committee, Andy Slaughter MP, in response to concerns raised about the government’s asylum and returns policy statement, Restoring Order and Control, delivered to the House on 17 November. In her letter, the Home Secretary addresses the Committee’s questions and sets out proposals for fundamental reform of the immigration and asylum appeals system. These include replacing the First-tier Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber (FTT-IAC) with a new independent appeals body, citing unsustainable growth in the asylum appeals caseload and the need for a system capable of handling high volumes at speed.

The Home Office has published its response to Lord Anderson’s Lessons for Prevent report, accepting all of the report’s recommendations and confirming a range of reforms to the Prevent programme. The response covers changes to local authority-chaired Channel panels, revised Channel and Prevent referral guidance, the handling of repeat Prevent referrals, improved information sharing, closer links between Channel panels and local authority Early Help teams and work with the Department for Education on school filtering and monitoring arrangements. The government also highlights pilots in nine local authorities on handing over cases from Prevent to alternative services where there are concerns about violence but no terrorist concern, and confirms further cross-government work on how Prevent interacts with wider safeguarding and violence-prevention systems.

The3million has published a reply from the Home Office concerning late applications to the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) by family members of qualifying British citizens (FMQBCs) who had returned to the UK before Brexit under the Surinder Singh route. The Home Office confirmed that EU law ceased to apply at the end of the post-EU exit transition period at 11 pm on 31 December 2020 and that residence cards issued under the European Economic Area (EEA) Regulations expired at the end of the grace period on 30 June 2021. It noted that while the Withdrawal Agreement did not cover Surinder Singh cases, the UK had provided temporary access to the EUSS for more than four years. British citizens and their family members had until 29 March 2022 to return to the UK and until 8 August 2023 to apply to the scheme, unless reasonable grounds for delay existed.

The Home Office has published its response to its consultation on potential approaches for implementing minimum service levels (MSL) for fire and rescue services during periods of strike action. The consultation took place between February and May 2023. 72 responses were received.

In a response to the3million and the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association (ILPA), the Home Office has provided clarification regarding certain aspects of the functionality of their eVisa system and identity document linking processes. While confirming no general system outage occurred in December 2024, they acknowledged a marginally increased error rate (below 1%) during peak periods. The response outlines specific prerequisites for adding identity documents to UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) accounts, namely: possession of valid digital status, absence of pending applications, and no ongoing document/photo updates. The Home Office has confirmed that UK-issued Refugee Travel Documents and Stateless Persons Travel Documents remain valid for international travel, with carriers being explicitly instructed to accept these documents independently. Functionality to add Home Office travel documents to the UKVI account will be delivered later in 2025. One recent change is that from 27 February 2025 name and nationality updates will be able to be undertaken on the app where an identity document has a chip (so, eg a dual national will not need to send a chipped passport to Liverpool to have it linked to their account). The department is currently reviewing their communication strategy to better explain functionality limitations at various stages of the application process, particularly for EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) status holders making upgrade applications.

The Home Office has issued updated versions of the three primary Worker and Temporary Worker Sponsor Guidance documents, the Glossary, and Appendix D. This follows extensive previous updates to these guidance documents made in March and April of this year. The most significant change reverses the extension of right to work check duties on sponsors that was added in March/April, with other additions being new guidance on the meaning of the term ‘operating and trading’, which is an important requirement for obtaining a sponsor licence, and a new mandatory licence refusal and revocation ground around establishing a sponsor business mainly to facilitate entry or residence of a worker. Full details of the changes are set out below.

The Home Office has published a revised draft of the Employer’s guide to right to work checks, dated 11 September 2026, which replaces the draft published on 16 July 2026. Neither version is yet in force; the guidance is expected to come into force on 1 October 2026, alongside the wider Right to Work Scheme reforms. The significant changes made in the 11 September draft are summarised below. These include an important change as regards implementation of the extended liability provisions.

On 6 March 2026 the Home Office brought into force version 03/26 of the principal sponsor guidance documents within the ‘Workers and Temporary Workers: guidance for sponsors’ collection, together with consequential amendments to the route-specific guidance for Skilled Workers. The changes affect Part 1: Apply for a licence, Part 2: Sponsor a worker, Part 3 (compliance and enforcement), Appendix D (record-keeping guidance) and the ‘Sponsor a Skilled Worker’ guidance, and also see the introduction of a new standalone and expanded Glossary. There is now extensive cross-referencing across all documents to that centralised source of definitions. Across the suite of guidance, the concept of a ‘genuine vacancy’ or ‘genuine employment’ has been removed and replaced with the newly defined term ‘eligible role’. This definition, now embedded in the Glossary and incorporated expressly into the other guidance documents, requires that the role must exist or be reasonably anticipated, meet all route-specific requirements including skill level and salary thresholds, comply with wider employment legislation and remain appropriate to the sponsor’s business throughout the period of sponsorship. References to assessing whether a vacancy is ‘genuine’ have been systematically replaced with consideration of whether the work meets the definition of an ‘eligible role’ and refusal, suspension and revocation provisions have been redrafted accordingly.  Other changes include Parts 1 and 3 now making explicit that sponsorship is voluntary, that a licence is granted at the discretion of the Home Office and creates no enforceable right and now stating that enforcement action may be taken on the basis of ‘reasonable suspicion’ of non-compliance rather than established breach. Further details of the changes will follow.

The Home Office announced that it has revoked the Bloomsbury Institute’s licence to sponsor international students after it failed to meet the Basic Compliance Assessment (BCA), an annual assessment of student sponsors that measures visa refusal rates, course enrolment and course completion. The announcement confirms that the assessment was carried out under thresholds that applied before 1 June 2026.  The Bloomsbury Institute has been removed from the Register of Student Sponsors and can no longer sponsor new international students under the Student route.

The Home Office has announced that a record number of 1,948 sponsor licences have been revoked between July 2024 and June 2025—more than double the 937 sponsor licences revoked in the previous year. Common reasons for revocation included sponsors using work visas to enable individuals to circumvent the Immigration Rules, underpaying and exploiting sponsored staff reliant on their jobs to remain in the country, and failing to provide promised work. The announcement notes that a new approach in the form of improved data and intelligence sharing across government and law enforcement has resulted in increased numbers of employers being found in violation of their sponsor duties. The Home Office reports that sectors with the highest levels of abuse include adult social care, hospitality, retail and construction. Based on current trends, the Home Office anticipates sponsor revocations to continue increasing for the current year.