Immigration and asylum

On this page:

About the team
Immigration funding applications
Specific contracting information
Seeking immigration legal advice?

About the team

Our Immigration Policy team aims to ensure every immigration and asylum client who meets the means assessment and whose case has merit will have access to high quality legal advice.

The team develops immigration policy for legal aid cases. This section includes:

Immigration contracts: the immigration contract and previous contractual amendments
Immigration policy development: new areas subject to policy focus
Immigration updates: latest information about schemes, contracts and bid rounds
the Accreditation scheme: information about doing Controlled Work in immigration.

Contacting the Immigration Policy team

If you have any queries on the Immigration Specification, the Immigration & Asylum Graduated Fee Scheme or any of our published guidance, you can email the Immigration Policy team at: immigration-services@legalservices.gov.uk

Immigration funding applications

We set up our National Immigration and Asylum Team (NIAT) in March 2004 to process applications for legal aid for immigration and asylum cases.

NIAT processes all applications for:

Full Representation
Controlled Legal Representation
an extension of the Upper Cost Limit.

Visit the Processing immigration applications page to read more.

Specific contracting information

Providers should contact their regional office for specific information about contracting for your organisation or region.

Seeking immigration legal advice?

Community Legal Advice can help if you are eligible for legal aid.

Call the helpline now on 0845 345 4345.

Calls cost no more than 4p per minute from a BT landline but calls from mobiles are usually more. Worried about the cost? Ask an adviser to call you back.

The helpline has a translation service if you would like advice in a language other than English or Welsh.