If you are counting down to your five years in the UK, you have been living with the same question since last year: will the rules change before I get there?
On 15 September, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood answered questions from the Home Affairs Committee. She did not give the answer everyone wants, but she said more than we have heard in months. Here is what matters, in plain terms.
What she told MPs
A decision is coming later this year. The new settlement policy, including any protection for people already on the route, will be announced before February 2027. That is when the first people who arrived in 2022 would reach five years.
The delay has reasons. The consultation drew many more responses than expected, the analysis took longer, and there has since been a change of government.
Protection for people already here is still open. The options range from letting some groups through unchanged, still settling at five years, to longer timelines for others.
She does not accept that the uncertainty is holding families back. Asked about people who feel unable to put down roots, she said she did not think so.
Source: Home Affairs Committee, oral evidence, 15 September 2026
What is on the table
The Home Office’s consultation, A Fairer Pathway to Settlement, ran from 20 November 2025 to 12 February 2026. There is no official response yet. In short:
The starting point would be 10 years, not five.
You could bring that down by meeting certain criteria. Earning at least £50,270 a year for three years would take you to five years, and £125,140 to three. Specified public service roles would mean five years. Partners, parents and children of British citizens, and BN(O) holders, would stay at five. Global Talent and Innovator Founder holders could settle after three. C1 English takes one year off, and community volunteering could bring you down to five to seven years. Only the largest reduction counts.
Some things would add years. Claiming public funds would add five or ten years. Illegal entry, entering on a visit visa or overstaying by six months or more could add up to 20. Refugees would start at 20 years.
It would apply to almost everyone not yet settled. The EU Settlement Scheme and Windrush cases sit outside it.
“everyone in the country today who has not already received indefinite leave to remain”
A Fairer Pathway to Settlement
Source: Earned settlement consultation, GOV.UK
What we still don’t know: who will be protected and from what date, when the new rules will start, and whether ECAA is included. The consultation mentions ECAA only once, in a list of existing routes, and says nothing about whether the new model would apply to it. For our Turkish readers, that is the biggest open question.
One thing she got wrong. Mahmood told MPs that the rules in force on the day you apply are the ones that count. That is not what the law says. In 2009, in a case called Odelola, the House of Lords decided that the rules in force on the day your application is decided are the ones that apply, unless the new rules say otherwise. So what really protects you is the protection written into the new rules themselves, and that is exactly what we should all be pushing for.
What I think
This is my own reading, not something the Government has announced.
Five years is not going away. It is becoming something you earn. Whatever the headline number, 10 years or even 20 for some, I expect many people to still settle at five years by meeting the new criteria, especially higher earners, people in public service and those with British family. To be straight with you: if you are a Skilled Worker earning under £50,270 with no other reduction, the proposals as written would put you at ten years, or nine with C1 English.
I expect the White Paper date to be the dividing line. The Government first formally announced the move from five years to ten in its immigration White Paper on 12 May 2025.
If you arrived before 12 May 2025, I expect you to be allowed to settle under the current rules. You built your life around a five-year route with no warning that it would change, and the fairness argument for protecting you is strong.
If you arrived after 12 May 2025, you came knowing about the ten-year plan. You are the most likely to move onto earned settlement: five years would still be possible through the reductions, but ten would be the default.
The strongest argument against my view comes from Mahmood herself. She said the rules that apply are the ones in force when you apply, “not when you arrived in the country”. On her framing, arrival date alone is not the test.
The real risk is in the small print. If protection covers only people who reach five years by a fixed date, rather than everyone who arrived before the White Paper, many people who came in 2023 and 2024 would be caught. That is where this will be won or lost.
What you can do now
Don’t rely on your arrival date alone. Only the protection written into the new rules will count.
Start gathering evidence that could shorten your route: P60s and tax records, English test results, and records of public service or volunteering.
If you will reach five years before any change takes effect, get your settlement file ready so you can apply as soon as you are eligible, after checking your own position with an adviser.
Protect your record. Claiming public funds (five or ten extra years) and overstaying by six months or more (up to 20 extra years) both add time in the proposals.
If you are on the ECAA route, keep meeting the current rules and be ready to apply once eligible, but don’t assume ECAA will be left out of the changes.
For employers: map which of your sponsored staff reach five years in 2027 and 2028, and who could qualify for a reduction, including through the £50,270 income route.
Our ECAA campaign: who has answered
Many of you have followed our work on ECAA refusals, so here is where things stand.
On 18 March we wrote to Simon Ridley, the Home Office’s Second Permanent Secretary, about how ECAA applications were being handled. He replied on 23 April. He told us applications on the route were 65% above what the Home Office had forecast, that some came with several hundred documents, that more decision-makers were being added, and that decisions should speed up over the summer. He also told us no automated tools are used to review evidence or decide ECAA cases, and invited us to send specific concerns to the ECAA team.
So we did. Over several months we collected evidence from our own cases and the ECAA practitioners’ working group. On 17 September we sent a report with anonymised examples to the Home Secretary, Home Office minister Jo White MP, Simon Ridley and Paul Morrison CBE (Director General, Immigration and Citizenship Service), the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, the Home Affairs Committee, MPs and sector bodies. The examples are basic, checkable mistakes:
a “minded to refuse” letter (the warning before a refusal) that listed invoices adding up to £7,670 but gave the total as £5,870;
payments the Home Office said were missing, which were right there in the original bank statement (£2,500 and £500), matching the invoices by payer, amount and reference.
We asked for two things: a review of every negative ECAA decision on applications made from 1 September 2025, with wrong decisions corrected, and fast decisions on every ECAA administrative review still waiting. It has been done before: in 2018 the Home Office reviewed 1,697 Tier 1 (General) settlement refusals. We asked for a full answer within 20 working days, which means by 15 October 2026.
Who has answered so far
Simon Ridley’s office confirmed receipt on 22 September. No full reply yet.
The Independent Chief Inspector gave a real answer on 24 September. The inspectorate will consider including the quality of ECAA extension and settlement decisions in its next annual inspection plan, without committing yet, and will keep ECAA administrative review delays in mind when it follows up its June 2026 inspection report. Its staff have proposed a call with us in early October, and we have offered to bring two or three other ECAA practitioners.
The Home Affairs Committee and MPs have acknowledged our letters. The Commons is in recess until mid-October.
Our Freedom of Information request is overdue for review. We have set 19 October 2026 as the final date.
What happens next. The call with the Inspectorate is our first chance to walk an independent body through these cases. If the Home Office has not given a full answer by 15 October, we will take this further, including to the Home Affairs Committee.
If you are a practitioner with similar ECAA examples (wrong figures, evidence overlooked, copy-and-paste review decisions), please contact us or the ECAA practitioners’ working group at ecaapractitioners.com. If you are an applicant who has had an ECAA refusal, reply to this post and tell us what happened.
Türk okurlarımız için kısa özet
İçişleri Bakanı, yeni “kazanılmış yerleşim” (earned settlement) politikasının bu yıl içinde, 2022’de gelenlerin ilk grubunun Şubat 2027’de başvuru hakkı kazanmasından önce açıklanacağını söyledi. Geçiş kuralları henüz belli değil. Danışma belgesi ECAA’yı yalnızca mevcut yerleşim yolları arasında bir kez anıyor; yeni modelin ECAA’ya uygulanıp uygulanmayacağı konusunda hiçbir şey söylemiyor. Benim görüşüm, 12 Mayıs 2025 White Paper’dan önce gelenlerin mevcut kurallarla yerleşebileceği yönünde; ancak bu bir hükümet kararı değil. ECAA kampanyamızda ise Bağımsız Sınır ve Göç Başmüfettişliği (ICIBI), ECAA karar kalitesini bir sonraki yıllık denetim planına almayı değerlendireceğini bildirdi ve Ekim başında bir görüşme önerdi.
Whether it is the new settlement rules or an ECAA refusal, people are asking for the same two things: clear rules about who they apply to, and decisions that get the basics right. The Home Office still owes applicants both.
This post is general information, not legal advice on your circumstances.
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Written by William O’Neill, Immigration Expert & Founder, The Mobility Brief
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