Earned Settlement - Government Response Not Published by 13 May Deadline
13 May 2026
If you have been waiting for clarity on when earned settlement rules will arrive, there is still no answer. The government was due to formally respond to a parliamentary inquiry into its proposals by today, 13 May 2026. No response has been published.
The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee published its report on earned settlement on 13 March 2026. Under parliamentary convention, the government must respond within 60 days, which made 13 May the formal deadline. The committee found the government's plans unclear and poorly developed. It warned the Home Office was not ready to implement changes of this scale quickly, and said protecting people who were already in the UK before any changes were announced should be a priority.
The missed committee deadline sits alongside another outstanding document: the government's response to the public consultation on earned settlement. That consultation closed in February 2026 after receiving more than 200,000 responses. Neither document has been published. The Home Secretary told Parliament in March that implementation would come "later this year." As of today, no Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules on earned settlement has been laid before Parliament. Immigration lawyers tracking the proposals have confirmed that no new earned settlement rules are in force.
For now, the rules you rely on have not changed. The five-year qualifying period for ILR applies across all routes, including BNO, Skilled Worker, Health and Care Worker, Scale-up Worker, UK Ancestry, and Family. If you are approaching your five-year mark, you can apply under the current rules. There is no benefit in waiting, and waiting carries risk. There is no guarantee that people already in the UK on visas will be fully protected if new rules eventually come into force.
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