How judicial review can help overcome delays in British citizenship applications

Facing lengthy delays in the processing of your British citizenship application? Judicial Review may provide a legal remedy to move your case forward.

The standard timeframe for receiving a decision on a British citizenship application is six months. In practice, however, delays can stretch far beyond this, causing stress, uncertainty and often impacting other areas of life such as employment, travel and family arrangements. In such situations, Understanding the legal remedies available to you in such circumstances is therefore vital. One such remedy is judicial review. In this blog we explain what judicial review is, when it can be used and how it might help when citizenship applications are significantly delayed.

What is judicial review?

Judicial review is a legal process by which a court reviews the lawfulness of a decision or action taken by a public body. In the UK immigration and nationality context, this can include inaction, as with the situation where the Home Office has failed to make a decision in your case within a reasonable period of time. Judicial review does not provide for a decision in your favour per se: instead, it forces the public body to explain and justify the delay and, if that explanation is found to be unlawful, to take remedial actions. The court may order the Home Office to make a decision, to give reasons for the delay or, in rare cases, to even award damages, as seen in the case of Husson v the Home Office.

According to the official guidance, judicial review is available in many immigration and asylum cases. The process can be initiated by making a relevant application to the Upper Tribunal (Immigration & Asylum Chamber, UTIAC). However, for some categories of cases, for example those concerning British citizenship, an application for judicial review has to be submitted to the Administrative Court instead.

When can judicial review help with citizenship application delays?

Judicial review may be appropriate when:

• Your application has passed the “usual” processing period (six months) without a decision, and there has been no communication explaining why the decision has been delayed.
• The delay is excessive, irrational or stems from some failure in the process, other than the usual backlog.

Short delays beyond the six months period will rarely be considered by a court to be unlawful, unless you are able to show significant prejudice.

Key steps and requirements

Initiating a judicial review involves certain procedural and time-based requirements. Some of the important ones are outlined below.

You must apply using the correct form (UTIAC1), and the application must be filed promptly and in any event within three months.

The initial application fee is £174. It is possible to obtain help with fees by filing forms UTIAC4 or UTIAC5 for urgent consideration or interim relief.

It should be noted that judicial review is not guaranteed to succeed. The court will examine whether the delay is unlawful (e.g. irrational, breaching human rights or breaching procedural fairness), rather than whether it is inconvenient for the applicant or overly long.

Some recent statistics and media reports help illustrate how common and serious delays can be:

• The media has reported the case of an individual who was waiting two years for a citizenship decision even though their case was considered “straightforward”.
• There were 269,213 grants of British citizenship in the year ending March 2025, representing a 22% increase compared with the previous year, which helps explain the increasing backlog.
• The number of refusals have also risen by 25%, suggesting more scrutiny and longer checking processes.

These facts make clear that delays are by no means rare and that they may extend beyond a period which could be considered ‘reasonable’.

Risks and considerations

Pursuing judicial review is a serious undertaking and should be viewed as a measure of last resort. You should first try to resolve any delay by contacting the Home Office directly. Judicial review can be stressful, expensive and time-consuming. As we have noted, there is no guarantee of success, and your case would need to fall within the strictly defined legal grounds of lawfulness, procedural fairness and irrationality. Delays in the Court’s handling of judicial reviews are also not uncommon, given current backlogs. If you initiate judicial review proceedings and the court determines that the delay was not unlawful, you are likely to be held liable for the Home Office’s costs in defending the claim you brought. It is therefore strongly recommended that if you are considering judicial review proceedings, you take professional advice from immigration experts. Gherson Solicitors are happy to advise, assist and secure the best possible outcome for your case.

Conclusion

Delays in British citizenship applications are a growing problem that can have a significant impact on those who may be waiting for a decision. While the Home Office aims to decide most applications within six months, many applicants have to wait for much longer. Judicial review can be an effective legal remedy for situations when delays are excessive, unexplained or incompatible with the Home Office’s duty to handle applications diligently because it compels public authorities to justify their conduct. In many cases, judicial review may prompt the Home Office to move forward with making a decision on an outstanding application.

If you are facing delays and considering available options, we recommend you contact our immigration experts for legal advice. You do not have to accept open-ended uncertainty.

Gherson’s Immigration Team are highly experienced in advising on British nationality matters. If you have any questions arising from this blog, please do not hesitate to contact us for advice, send us an e-mail, or, alternatively, follow us on X, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn to stay-up-to-date.

The information in this blog is for general information purposes only and does not purport to be comprehensive or to provide legal advice. Whilst every effort is made to ensure the information and law is current as of the date of publication it should be stressed that, due to the passage of time, this does not necessarily reflect the present legal position. Gherson accepts no responsibility for loss which may arise from accessing or reliance on information contained in this blog. For formal advice on the current law please do not hesitate to contact Gherson. Legal advice is only provided pursuant to a written agreement, identified as such, and signed by the client and by or on behalf of Gherson.

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