What is NRPF?

The term’ public funds’ has a specific meaning in immigration law and does not include all services funded by public money.  Instead it is a list of benefits and services defined by the Home Office. This list is long and changes regularly. You should view the Home Office’s dedicated page for more detailed information 

It is important to note that the NRPF condition applies only to public funds listed by the Home Office and not “funds from the public,” such as most charitable donations. 

A person whose status in the UK is subject to NRPF isn’t allowed to access any ‘public funds’. However, this does not mean that the same person cannot access publicly funded support not listed. Although the list is far shorter than we would like, individuals with NRPF can, for example, access

• New Style Jobseeker’s Allowance
• Bereavement Support Payment
• Scottish Legal Aid Board-funded legal support
• Free school meals
• Early learning and childcare support
• Most NHS services.

You can find further information about available support on relevant pages under the ‘support’ tab

Section 115(9) of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 makes clear that a person “subject to immigration control” means a person who:

1. requires leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom but does not have it; 
2. has leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom, which is subject to a condition that he does not have recourse to public funds; 
3. has leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom given as a result of a maintenance undertaking; or 
4. has leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom only as a result of paragraph 17 of Schedule 4. 

In everyday terms, this means people in the UK with “temporary leave to remain”, the most common form of this is living in the UK on a visa. The most popular visa routes with the NRPF attached are Student, Graduate, Skilled Worker, and Health and Care Worker.

For a full list of all the visa types with NRPF, please see pages 11-24 of version 21.0 of the Home Office’s “Public Funds Migrant access to public funds, including social housing and homelessness assistance, and social care” 

No one knows for sure. 

In the Home Office’s most recent migrant journey publication, it was estimated that around 3.6 million people were issued visas that would typically have NRPF. This does not include the unknown number of unauthorised migrants or the over 225,000 people seeking asylum. 

Importantly, these numbers do not reflect the population of people with NRPF experiencing destitution. The vast majority of people in the UK on a visa with the NRPF condition are not facing destitution despite the complete lack of a state safety net. 

The Home Office does not keep a record of how many visas are issued with the NRPF condition. In February 2025, Lord Hanson of Flint suggested that once the Home Office’s transition to the new ATLAS system was complete, data quality and availability could improve, yet, we are at least publicly still in the dark over exact figures.

The NRPF condition was first introduced in the Immigration Act 1971, used as a means of controlling entry to the UK, requiring proof of financial self-sufficiency. The application of NRPF has been the standard procedure since 1980, with the current iteration of the policy contained in the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. 

The application of the condition has been extended to cover more and more groups – the introduction of the “Hostile Environment” policies in 2012 marked the most significant expansion of the condition and a widening of the broader portfolio of policies that embed immigration control across health, welfare, social security, and housing.

The “hostile environment” is UK government policy, now officially termed the “compliant environment,” designed to make life so difficult for people without legal immigration status that they leave the country voluntarily. Introduced primarily through the Immigration Acts of 2014 and 2016, the policy consists of measures that can “deputise immigration control” by at times requiring landlords, employers, banks, and the NHS to conduct immigration status checks, with penalties for non-compliance.

This approach has turned citizens and service providers into immigration enforcement officers, making the border permeate throughout British society. The policy’s most infamous consequence was the Windrush scandal, where Commonwealth citizens who had lived in the UK legally for decades were wrongly denied services, threatened with deportation, detained, or deported because they could not produce documentation proving their right to remain. 

The House of Lords 2018 “Impact of the Hostile Environment” report provides a full account of the policy, its history, and its role in the Windrush scandal. Alongside this, we recommend that you read Open Rights Group and Migrants Organise’s recent report on the “Digital Hostile Environment”, which adapts the term to describe the increasingly hostile, surveillance-heavy experience for migrants living in the UK. 

Individuals who have arrived in the UK from abroad and are subject to immigration control will have this status clearly labelled on their Home Office documents; for example, it should be made clear on their Electronic Visa (eVisa). If you are in the UK and do not have NRPF but cannot prove your entitlement to public funds, for example, a passport vignette or eVisa, then you will be unable to access public funds.

If these documents do not state that you have NRPF, then you are not subject to the condition.

If an individual is unsure if they are subject to the condition, it is advised that they seek specialist immigration advice as soon as possible. 

This depends on the type of visa or permission to stay in the UK the individual has. 

Those who are currently on a “route to settlement“, a visa pathway that confers permanent residency, may be subject to the condition for at least 5 years. In 2025, the UK Government consulted on extending the standard route to settlement from 5 to 10 years; we strongly oppose this. You can read our submission to the Home Affairs Committee. 

In certain circumstances, families and/or individuals can apply for a change of condition, which removes the condition from the relevant person’s visa for the remainder of its validity. You can read more about the process on this page. 

Accessing public funds whilst being subject to NRPF may have a serious and detrimental effect on your current stay in the country and any future applications for further leave to remain. An individual will breach the NRPF condition if they are either awarded public funds or their presence allows someone else to receive extra funding. 

Accessing financial housing support as a result of an assessment by your local authority social care team is not a public fund and should not impact any future applications you make. However we reccomend that you discuss this with an immigration adviser supporting with any application

The UK Government has recently consulted on such issues in their February 2026 “A Fairer Pathway to Settlement“ consultation, where they asked members of the public their thoughts on applying penalties for individuals seeking settlement who claimed public funds; 5 years for those accessing funds for under a year and 10 years for those accessing for over a year. Although these are just two questions from a government consultation, they do foreshadow potential policy changes. You must seek professional advice before making or being included in any claim for benefits deemed a public fund. 

Settlement, legally known as Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR), is the point at which most migrants become eligible to access public funds. However, this may change. In the February 2026 consultation, the UK government asked members of the public whether NRPF should be a condition of settlement. Although unconfirmed, this would likely delay the point at which most migrants access public funds to citizenship.

Individuals in the UK with certain visa types can apply from within the UK to have the NRPF condition lifted through a “Change of Conditions” (CoC) application. This includes those with permission to stay granted under the family, private life, Child Staying with or joining a Non-Parent Relative, or Hong Kong British National (Overseas) routes.

For those eligible, the NRPF condition will be lifted if

• They are destitute or at risk of imminent destitutio
• There are reasons relating to the welfare of a relevant child which outweigh the considerations for imposing or maintaining the condition.
• The applicant is facing exceptional circumstances affecting their income or expenditure.

In all cases, the applicant is responsible for providing sufficient evidence to satisfy the decision-maker that the NRPF condition should be lifted. The circumstances of each case will be considered in light of all the information and evidence provided. It is strongly advised that individuals looking to apply for a change of conditions seek the help of qualified immigration advisors.

Aside from the system’s complexity, applicants face the issue that CoCs are effectively time-limited. This is because the NRPF condition is automatically applied for every visa extension, even if they had successfully had the condition removed previously. This leads to applicants having to file for a new CoC application after every subsequent visa renewal. Many people do not have the resources or expertise to do this and end up losing access to public funds.

Since the Home Office began tracking CoC data in Q3 of 2017, they have received 38,347 applications, accepted 25,281, rejected 12,143, and have 923 still pending. Throughout the near decade of data coverage, the level of applications and grant rate have fluctuated massively, peaking around Covid-19. The Unity Project provides extensive reporting on this topic.

The UK government has maintained a consistent position since the inception of the condition; the NRPF policy ensures that those migrating to the country do not drain the nation’s finances and are expected to provide a net contribution to the nation they choose to move to. This approach has not wavered, regardless of the year or party in power.

The most recent immigration white paper from the current Labour government indicates a strengthening of this view and, potentially, an intensification of the logics that underpin the policy, as clearly communicated in their May 2025 White Paper titled ‘Restoring control over the immigration system’.

The Scottish Government’s approach differs historically. The most obvious example of the split in approach between Westminster and Holyrood is the existence of the Ending Destitution Together Strategy, Scotland’s strategy to improve support for people living with NRPF, published in 2021. In contrast, there is no official strategy for the UK. In a May 2026 FOI publication, the Scottish Government laid out there opinions on the matter:

“We have long called on the UK Government to remove and disapply the NRPF condition to people in vulnerable circumstances, particularly in the cases of families with children but this has not been taken forward.”

It would be too simplistic to present this difference as representing a clear binary; there is an appetite amongst many in Westminster to mitigate or remove the condition, and amongst some in Holyrood to keep and/or extend the NRPF condition.

There are several reasons why policy positions from the UK and Scottish governments may differ. On a basic level, the makeup of each parliament will differ, with the level of support for political parties varying between Scottish and UK-wide elections. The most prominent example is the difference in size and influence between the Scottish National Party (SNP) in Holyrood and Westminster. There are also more context-dependent reasons, such as party politics, party identity, and relevant election manifestos, all of which may or may not address No Recourse to Public Funds and other immigration conditions. We risk losing nuance by over-generalising in this area.

Scotland has and will have a slightly different relationship to the rest of the UK, particularly England, when it comes to migration. Scotland has a lower proportion of its population born abroad (10%) than England (17%). Despite this, migration has proven pivotal for the nation’s population growth; without it, Scotland’s population would have shrunk in the previous decade. However, much like the rest of the UK, Scottish society relies heavily and is dependent on the work of migrants.

Scotland’s social care sector is heavily dependent on international workers, with more than a quarter of the workforce coming from overseas. Despite this, the UK government closed the dedicated ‘Social Care Visa’ in the summer of 2025. In the same vein, shifts in UK visa policy have led to a nearly 90% decline in the number of visas issued to migrant workers in Caring Personal Service Occupations in the year ending June 2025.

The Scottish Government said that these policies are ‘damaging Scotland’s health and social care sector‘. An identical situation has been seen in the National Health Service (NHS). International recruitment is essential for staffing our hospitals, with almost 25% of staff being foreign nationals. Yet the same restrictive visa landscape has led to a situation in which the number of nurses the NHS was able to recruit from overseas fell by 80% last year. This collapse comes at a time when Scotland faces substantial waiting lists.

Prosperity is fueled by the efforts of Scottish-born and migrants workers alike.