United Impact have made an animation with Brickwall, to show some of the layers of the extremely harmful impact of the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) immigration condition, on families in the UK.
No recourse to public funds’ (NRPF) is an immigration condition imposed on people ‘subject to immigration control’. A person with NRPF cannot access benefits and services classed as public funds.
This means that individuals, and their children, are denied access to a safety net and prevented from accessing support through in-work and out-of-work benefits such as Child Benefit, Tax Credits, Universal Credit, Income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Local Welfare Provision, Housing Benefit and social housing, as well as other financial support schemes.
The NRPF policy is applied to most forms of temporary leave to remain. The Migration Observatory estimated that, at the end of 2022, approximately 2.6 million people in the UK currently had NRPF as a condition of their leave. This does not include those living in the UK who do not have a settled immigration status, with best estimates suggesting there were 674,000 people without a settled immigration status living in the UK in 2017.
Many families with NRPF experience extreme poverty, and in addition are subject to wider structural injustices in society.
The challenges facing families affected by NRPF are the same as those affecting other families - e.g. loss of employment, relationship breakdown, bereavement, pregnancy, poverty caused by precarious or low paid employment or exploitation, disability and illness, accommodation disputes, debt, amongst other reasons. What sets families with NRPF apart is that they cannot access help or assistance to cope with these difficult circumstances.
NRPF is the primary underlying factor in driving children in families with NRPF into situations of poverty. Without this restriction, families would be able to access the support they need to address their situation and help their family out of poverty.
Without access to the welfare safety net families often end up living in situations of deep poverty for extended periods of time with long term negative impact on children’s health and development.
Leaflet for families on how to seek help
Advice for those working with people with NRPF
Training for organisations working with families with NRPF
✍️✉️ Write to your MP asking them to call for the NRPF condition to be scrapped, please see our pre-filled letter template here.
💻📱 We would really appreciate it if you could give us a follow on social media, and re-share our posts to spread awareness!
Our social media handles are:
Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/unitedimpactuk.bsky.social Instagram @unitedimpact_uk X @UnitedImpactUK
Some suggested social media posts are:
- "The 'No Recourse to Public Funds Policy', drives families in the UK in to extreme poverty, and affects children's development. Watch United Impact's animation about the devastating impact of NRPF. Please write to your MP using this pre-filled letter, to ask them to call for an end to NRPF."
- "Children in migrant families subjected to the 'No Recourse to Public Funds' immigration condition, suffer deep levels of poverty. Watch United Impact's animation on the harmful ways NRPF has impacted their families, and their children's health and development. Write to your MP and ask them to call for an end to NRPF."
- "The UK's 'No Recourse to Public Funds' immigration condition, is estimated to affect over 3 million migrants in the UK. It denies people from accessing in-work and out-of-work benefits, and social housing. The result is children living in deep poverty with long term harm to their health and development. Watch United Impact's animation about NRPF, and write to your MP."
Thank you very much for supporting us in trying to create positive change!
If you would like to discuss working with us on this issue, please reach out to us at [email protected]
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