Home Office Positive Decision

The Home Office may take many months, sometimes several years to make a decision on your asylum claim. If you are worried you’ve been waiting too long for a decision, or if there are specific circumstances which mean that you need a decision quickly, you can ask your lawyer to contact the Home Office.

You can also contact your local Member of Parliament (MP) if your case has been delayed. Find your MP here.

During this time, it is important for you to keep strong, and keep in touch with groups and support networks who can help to support you. You are not alone, and having a community makes going through this process slightly less difficult. 

When the Home Office has made a decision about your claim, they must tell your social worker and lawyer what they have decided. The Home Office will either decide to grant you immigration status to stay in the UK, or refuse your claim (read the next page to find out more about this). 

If the Home Office makes a positive decision on your asylum claim, you will be granted leave to remain in the UK (you are allowed to stay).

Most commonly, you will be granted Refugee Status or Humanitarian Protection. If you applied for asylum after 28 June 2022 and you are granted refugee status, you will have 5 years’ leave to remain. You will be able to apply for settlement after 5 years.

If you are granted humanitarian protection status, you will have 30 months’ leave to remain. You will have to renew this status every 30 months until you have lived in the UK lawfully for 10 years. Then you will also be able to apply for indefinite leave to remain (this is a type of permanent visa) and then UK citizenship (this comes with a British passport). Read more here.

If you made your asylum claim after 28 June 2022 and it has been accepted but you entered the UK without permission, you might be granted ‘Temporary Refugee Permission to Stay’. If you are granted Temporary Refugee Permission to Stay you will have 30 months’ leave to remain. You have to renew this status every 30 months in the same way as with Humanitarian Protection. 

If you have Refugee Status, or Humanitarian Protection (and in some very limited situations Temporary Refugee Permission to Stay) you can apply for family reunion. This process allows people who were in your family before you left your home country to come to the UK to be with you, if certain conditions are met. Speak to your lawyer about how this works.