For those of you who are not aware, the EU Settlement Scheme (also known as ‘settled status’ or EUSS) settled status is the new immigration system for European nationals living in the UK, negotiated as part of the Withdrawal Agreement. It requires EU, EAA and Swiss nationals living, working and studying in the UK to apply for permission to stay and continue to live here.

The deadline for applying to the scheme is 30 June 2021. After this, if EU citizens for whatever reasons fail to apply, there are serious implications, as they would become undocumented migrants from the 1^st July (no matter how long they have lived and worked here). The consequences of not applying cannot be clearer from a legal point of view: those EU citizens who do not make a successful application by 30 June 2021 will become unlawfully resident in the UK and therefore can lose their jobs, rented properties and access to services.

Stratford District Council has run surgeries and events in the past to help with settled status applications, and has posted on its social media channels. 

Despite the Covid pandemic and its lockdowns, which included disruption to the face-to-face support programmes, as well as  you can imagine a backlog of appointments at embassies to renew identity documents, the government will not extend the deadline, so it’s important that the EU nationals living and working in our district apply for settled status by the 30th of June.

For full details please see Important message EUSS