The Home Secretary confirmed on 2 November that indefinite leave to remain will normally take ten years, up from five. She dropped a 15-year wait for lower-paid workers after a Labour backlash, but the fiscal case for the change is disputed.
Anyone who came to Britain on a work, family or protection visa and has not yet been granted settlement will, from 2027, normally wait ten years instead of five before they can stay permanently. The government published its response to the “earned settlement” consultation on 2 November, and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood set it out in the Commons.19
The ladder has more rungs than the headline suggests. Under the published tables, people earning above £125,141 for three years, or qualifying as top global talent, can settle after three. Those earning above £50,271 for three of five years, or working in listed public services, can settle after five. The standard route needs earnings of at least £12,571 in five of seven years. People who breached immigration rules or claimed public funds wait 20. Everyone also needs good English, no criminal record, no debt to the taxpayer and three years of National Insurance contributions.8
Refugees face the longest waits. Those resettled by a safe, legal route get five years. Others get ten if they work or study, and 20 on “core protection”. Arriving illegally, including by small boat, adds ten more, so the worst case is 30.8
The sharpest softening is for care workers. Those who arrived before the government's May 2025 immigration white paper and met their visa terms, including pay of at least £25,000, keep a five-year route. About a quarter of the roughly 250,000 people, dependants included, who came on or switched to the care route in 2022–25 did not meet those terms. They can apply for a fresh five-year care visa.8
The government's case is that permanent residence should be earned, not granted by time served. When Mahmood launched the plan in November 2025 she said settling “is not a right, but a privilege”.2 On 2 November she added that there is “nothing fair about allowing unsafe and illegal entry”, and said settlement “plays a key part” in deterring crossings.9
Money is the second argument. Mahmood cited asylum support costing about £4bn a year, and the government says the changes will save “billions” in welfare.89 Her earlier £10bn claim, that care workers and their adult dependants would cost that much over their lifetimes, comes from a Home Office note putting the figure at £9.5bn.5
That figure does not measure what the reform saves. The statistics regulator, in a letter on 14 May, said the Home Office confirmed it is the lifetime net cost of that group under existing rules, not a saving from delaying settlement. A clearer statement of the counterfactual, it said, would have helped.4 No savings estimate for the new policy appears in the published summary, and a full impact assessment is promised only before implementation.1
The softening has its own explanation. Labour MPs and ministers objected: Housing Secretary Angela Rayner attacked backdating earlier this year, and LBC reported about 100 backbenchers unhappy before the statement.9 A House of Lords committee had also said in June that applying the rules to people already on a route would be “manifestly unfair”.7
The Migration Observatory counted about 4.2 million people on temporary visas at the end of 2024. Some 2.2 million of them, 53%, were on visas with a five-year path to settlement. Dependants of workers were the largest group, at 645,000.6 Many will meet an exception, and some have since left. But the five-year assumption those families planned around has gone.
The pipeline is already full. The Home Office granted 199,628 settlements in the year to June 2026, up 24% and the most since the year to June 2011. It says the rise reflects Indian nationals who arrived on work routes now completing five years, and Hong Kong BN(O) visa holders, introduced in January 2021, reaching the end of their qualifying period.3 Under the old rules the Home Office projected 1.6 million settlements between 2026 and 2030, according to the Observatory.6
LBC reports the revised package means about 500,000 people will wait longer than five years. We could not confirm that figure against the government's published tables.9
No impact assessment is published, so the numbers who will wait longer, and the savings, are unquantified by the government. We read the response through its gov.uk page and secondary summaries, not the full 62-page document. Whether the Home Office can process the change by 2027 is untested.
The changes will be laid in the December Immigration Rules and introduced over 2027, with guidance to follow. The Migration Advisory Committee is due to report on the top-talent group and the list of qualifying public-service jobs. A full impact assessment is promised before implementation.18 Parliament returns on 10 November. The Home Office's next quarterly statistics, for the year to September, will show whether people are rushing to settle before the rules bite.