UK Home Office £1000 fee for children to register as British citizens is unlawful

Court rules that Home Office failed to assess and consider the impact of this fee on children and their rights

The Court of Appeal on 18 February 2021 upheld the ruling of the High Court that the £1,012 fee the Home Office charges children to register as a British citizen is unlawful.

This landmark case, brought by the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens (PRCBC) and O (a child), has revealed the dreadful impact of this fee on children.

In 2019, the High Court found a “mass of evidence” showing that the fee prevents many children from registering their British citizenship, leaving them feeling “alienated, excluded, isolated, “second-best”, insecure and not fully assimilated into the culture and social fabric of the UK.”

The Home Office did not challenge these findings and the Court of Appeal added that for children like O, “one of three children of a single parent on state benefits, it is difficult to see how the fee could be afforded at all.”

The current administrative processing cost of a child’s registration as a British citizen is only £372. The Home Office uses the remaining £640 profit to cross-subsidise the immigration system.

Today’s judgment again requires the Home Office to reconsider the fee and ensure that children’s best interests are taken fully into account in doing so.

The courts have made clear that where a child has a right to British citizenship it will generally be in the child’s best interests to be registered as British – something the Home Office continues to fail to recognise and act upon.