A lot of people are asked to redirect their complaint elsewhere or told the issue has been resolved when it hasn’t, only to be “ignored for weeks” with no timeline for resolution and forced to seek legal advice, said Victoria Welsh, a co-convenor of the Immigration Law Practitioners Association’s (ILPA) digitalization working group and the head of business immigration at Taylor Rose.
One automated message from UKVI acknowledging receipt of an error report said the service was “currently experiencing a very high volume of enquiries” and as a result would “not be able to respond within [its] published timeframes,” according to an email dated February 23 seen by POLITICO.
“We’re not a charity, we’re here to make money, but it’s not right that people have to instruct lawyers to help solve these problems,” Welsh added.
Andrew Tingley, a partner at Tingley Dalanay and another co-convenor of the ILPA working group, said UKVI often doesn’t accept that the error reported even constitutes an error. “This calls into question whether the statistics collected are accurate,” he said. “There does not appear to be any institutional acceptance either by civil servants or ministers of the major issues that people are facing.”
Glitches will inevitably occur with any rollout of a new system, Welsh said. The problem is “the [Home Office’s] continued denial that there are problems, the continued statements that in the vast majority of cases, everybody’s fine … frankly, it’s gaslighting,” she said.
Serious consequences
For those who do encounter problems, the consequences can be devastating. “Any scale of problem should be enough to take it more seriously than what is happening … People are losing accommodation. People are being shut out of their bank account. People are being refused entry to the country. They’re being refused boarding on planes,” Welsh said.