People applying to become British citizens are charged more than five times the amount it costs the Home Office to process their application, a new analysis has shown. The latest fee of £1,709 to become a citizen compares with an estimated administrative cost of just £324, according to the latest Home Office data. Applicants must also pay a further £130 for a citizenship ceremony if successful, taking the total cost of becoming a British citizen to £1,839.
The costs have emerged from an analysis by the left-leaning thinktank the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). It comes as Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, is expected to soften plans to double the waiting time for some people to qualify for permanent residency. A fees-and-costs table released by the Home Office shows that, after a 6% increase, aspiring citizens will pay £1,709 for naturalisation as a British citizen.
The estimated unit cost is just £324. For nearly all applicants, a citizenship ceremony is mandatory and must be booked within three months of receiving confirmation of citizenship. The UK charges considerably more than other G7 countries for naturalisation.
Its £1,709 application fee is more than three times the next highest – the US at £562. Before applying for citizenship, many applicants have to pay thousands of pounds in visa fees, as well as a mandatory annual immigration health charge of £1,035 per person. Steve Valdez-Symonds, the refugee and migration rights policy lead at Amnesty International, said: “Successive governments have charged these increasingly high fees for the purpose of passing the cost of the UK’s immigration system from the taxpayer on to migrant people – this includes the cost of the system’s errors and delays.
At the same time, the thinktank argues that the citizenship process itself does too little to encourage civic participation or build a shared sense of belonging. The former Labour home secretary David Blunkett, in a foreword to the analysis, called for citizenship and democracy to be placed on the schools curriculum next year, not in 2028 as planned. He also called for early “indefinite leave to remain” to be granted to applicants on authorised visa or resettlement routes who pass courses in English and demonstrate their commitment to the community.
The same approach could be used as part of this journey to citizenship to invest in and develop greater social cohesion and integration,” Blunkett wrote. The IPPR called for Britain to be less reliant on transitory migration and said it should instead build a system geared towards settlement, integration and citizenship. It also said citizenship fees should be much closer to administrative costs, and that there should be clearer pathways for long-term residents.
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