The monthly EU Settlement Scheme stats are out! What did we learn?

Application volumes have never been lower
Application decisions have never been fewer

The Home Secretary said a few weeks ago that "support has not stopped". Fair enough: it dwindled. <thread>

New applications to the EUSS halved in April, and were at their lowest ever. Impossible to maintain now that closures of phone advice lines, local scanning centres, and inability to send in documents had no impact.

Processing capacity also seems way down: there's a huge back of over 300k cases and yet the EUSS only processed 73k. This is about half the processing capacity from almost a year ago.

There were 100 more refusals on eligibility grounds (nothing to do with criminality; there were no suitability refusals). Other outcomes, where applications are not refused nor granted, remain high: 1 in 30 EUSS applications is not granted status.

And the final thing: the report openly admits that the Home Office started refusing applications on eligibility grounds only in February. Because...? How much time would the HO would allow before refusing an application? How many contact attempts? How has that changed? Why?

We have seen a case where the applicant was refused after chasing the Home Office for 7 (!) months and getting wrong advice. Long waiting times and hard deadline create a double whammy that may catch out many applicants from more vulnerable groups, especially in the pandemic.

So above all the stats show that the EUSS has slowed down massively. Yes it's still ticking along, but for many applicants the clock just started ticking much faster. The scheme is slower, and the deadline is approaching. <end>

The link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics-april-2020