Asking your Member of Parliament for help

What this route is

Members of Parliament handle casework for the people who live in their constituency, and immigration is one of the commonest kinds. There is a dedicated Home Office team for that correspondence: published caseworker guidance describes a Member's office contacting the Home Office team by email, phone or letter, and that team putting questions to whichever part of the department holds the case.

The Data Protection Act 2018 is what allows the Home Office to disclose information about a constituent to their Member of Parliament through that team. The guidance is at GOV.UK, complaints: MP enquiries caseworker guidance.

When people use it

An enquiry is worth making once the ordinary channels have been tried and the published time for a decision has passed. Common situations:

• A long wait. The application has been with the Home Office well beyond the published processing time, and you want to know what stage it has reached.
• No reply. You have contacted the Home Office yourself and had no answer.
• Missing documents. A passport or document sent to the Home Office cannot be accounted for.
• Circumstances that have changed. An expiring permission, a job offer, a family emergency — facts the Home Office may not know.
• After a refusal. A Member of Parliament cannot overturn a decision, but can ask for the reasoning to be explained. The formal routes are separate: see our settlement refusal guide and administrative review.

Before that, use the ordinary routes. GOV.UK is clear about their limits: contact centre staff cannot give advice about your personal circumstances, and cannot tell you whether your application will be successful or when you will get a decision. Our Home Office contact guide sets out what they can do.

Finding the right Member of Parliament

Enter your postcode at Find Your MP on the UK Parliament website. It has to be the Member for the constituency where you live. A Member will not normally take up a case for someone in another constituency, so writing to the wrong one loses time.

You can write by email or letter, or ask to be seen at a surgery — the name for the local meetings Members hold for constituents. Check the Member's own website for how their office prefers to be contacted and whether a surgery has to be booked.

What to put in the letter

1. Your full name and address. The address is what shows you are their constituent, so put it near the top.
2. Your date of birth and nationality.
3. Your Home Office reference number. It is on your acknowledgement email or letter. Without it, the case cannot be located.
4. What you applied for and when. Name the route — for example settlement as a Skilled Worker or settlement as a partner — and give the date of application.
5. The problem, factually. The caseworker guidance asks Home Office staff to answer questions from the team factually, briefly and without opinions; a letter written the same way is easier to act on.
6. What you have already done. Dates of your own contact with the Home Office, and any replies.
7. What you are asking for. "Please ask the Home Office what stage my application has reached" gives the office something to send. "Please help" does not.

Attach copies of the acknowledgement and any correspondence. Never send original documents. The office will usually ask you to confirm in writing that they may act for you, because they need your consent before the Home Office will discuss your case with them.

What it can and cannot do

• Can: put an enquiry to the Home Office team, ask what stage the application has reached, ask for an explanation of a delay, put facts about your circumstances in front of the right team, and start a complaint through the Home Office complaints process.
• Cannot: overturn a decision, promise a date, promise an outcome, require the Home Office to depart from the Immigration Rules, or act as your legal representative. Only a solicitor or a regulated immigration adviser can advise you on your case.

The realistic result is information. The reply usually explains where the application has got to, which is not something you can find out any other way — there is no public progress tracker for a settlement application.

What happens after you write

1. The office acknowledges your letter or email.
2. They ask you to confirm they may act on your behalf, if you have not already said so.
3. They write to the Home Office team that handles enquiries from Members of Parliament.
4. That team replies. Home Office caseworker guidance describes a 20-day service level agreement for replying to the Member, including quality check and approval. That guidance is written for HM Passport Office staff, and GOV.UK does not publish a separate figure for immigration enquiries.
5. The office forwards the reply to you.

GOV.UK does not publish a figure for how long the whole exchange takes end to end, so do not plan around one.

Other routes

• A solicitor or regulated adviser. For advice on your own case, which is the one thing a Member of Parliament cannot give. See using a solicitor for settlement.
• The Home Office directly. Our contact guide covers the published channels and their limits.
• Checking your own status. See tracking a settlement application.
• The same route for other applications. Our guide for citizenship cases covers the identical process.

Questions and answers