The Settled Status System for EEA nationals and their family members has finished its first stage of private beta testing. The system should automatically gather existing data from government agencies to confirm the applicants’ residence in the UK and thereby their right to stay.

The results have been promising with 96% matched and approved without further intervention required. However, a significant percentage of applicants (1.4%) could not be matched to tax or pensions records due to data entry errors. A further 3% had issues being matched to existing records but we are told that these have since been corrected by entering further search formulas to account for certain name variations common among some nationalities, which are sometimes entered into the UK system differently e.g. “von Hoffen” or just “Hoffen”.

The system is so far on schedule and expected to be fully operational and open to all applicants by 29 March 2018. The Home Office publicly acknowledges that this system will be used even in the event of a no deal situation. The IT development process is too far along not to use it and there are insufficient resources for arranging anything else.