According to the latest update of the Form AN guidance issued in July 2022, comprehensive sickness insurance is no longer a requirement for EU nationals whilst either a student or a self-sufficient person to get their British citizenship.

The mentioned group of EU nationals do not need to pay immigration health surcharge, but they must provide their comprehensive sickness insurance when submit their applications of permission to stay and citizenship applications. Applicants fail to do so were panelised, or their British citizenship applications were refused. Such requirement in British citizenship is now relieved and is not an issue anymore.

However, the good character guidance still mentions that lack of comprehensive sickness insurance is an issue, while good character is one of the requirements to be met, referred to full nationalisation guidance. It is believed that most applicants can relax, but the Home Office may reserve the right to have comprehensive sickness insurance over a small group of people with blemished immigration record.

Some interesting figures about EUSS

Since opened in 2018, the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) had made almost 6.5 million decisions by June 2022, according to quarterly announced immigration statistics. However, there were a lot of applications were granted an incorrect status.

Refer to report issued by the Migration Observatory, it was found that about 167,000 EUSS applications for settled status between 2019 and 2021 were granted pre-settled status. People received incorrect status or refusal tried to challenge the Home Office in three main ways: request an administrative review, make a repeat application and appeal to the immigration tribunal. Some people may even do a judicial review, write to a local MP or make a complaint to the Home Office.

The quarterly issued immigration statistics from the Home Office showed that, from August 2018 to September 2021, there were almost 145,000 grants of status from a repeat application among 354,000 refusals or rejections, the success rate is only about 40%.

For administrative review, there were about 9,200 requests in the mentioned period but only about 2,400 were processed and only around 1,300 of them have been fully carried out. Previously, the administration review was set to receive the result within 28 days, however, it is expected a longer period of time to receive a result, 6 months or even longer.

Some applicants may go for tribunal appeal directly when they want to challenge the Home Office about a decision. According to FOI data, there were 2,900 EUSS appeals by February 2022, 790 of them have been decided, and only 34 of them were finally granted a status!

SINCERE IMMIGRATION