UK Residency Grants Hit 16-Year High Before Crackdown

Britain granted permanent settlement to 199,628 people in the year to June 2026 — a 24% jump on the previous year and the highest annual total since June 2011 — as migrants rush to lock in residency before the government tightens the rules.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is preparing reforms that would stretch the wait for indefinite leave to remain from five years to ten, with longer waits still for low-wage workers and those on benefits.

Citizenship applications are climbing too: 315,224 people applied in the year to June 2026, up 17%.

The Numbers

199,628 people were granted permanent settlement in the year to June 2026, up 24% year on year and a 16-year high.

80,409 of them were foreign workers on work visas — a 36% increase in a single year.

245,520 people were granted British citizenship over the same period, down 4% from the year before but still historically high.

An estimated 1.6 million migrants are on track to qualify for indefinite leave to remain between 2026 and 2030.

EU citizen applications for British citizenship rose 40% over the year, according to the University of Oxford's Migration Observatory.

Why It's Happening

Two forces are converging. The large cohort of workers who arrived in the early 2020s is now hitting the five-year eligibility mark, and the prospect of a clampdown is pushing anyone who qualifies to file now rather than risk being caught by the new rules.

The Independent reports that uncertainty over future immigration policy is itself a driver of the record application numbers.