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Windrush Compensation Scheme

The Windrush generation is a group of people who migrated to the UK from Caribbean Commonwealth countries between 1948 and 1973. Such people are entitled to live in the UK permanently but many of them did not have documentation to prove this.

Because they were unable to prove their right to live in the UK, some members of the Windrush generation – and other long-standing UK residents – were wrongly treated as unauthorised immigrants as time went on. They were denied access to employment, healthcare and other services, and in some cases detained or removed from the country.

The obstacles that people encountered in trying to prove their status, and the difficulties and distress they experienced as a result, came to general public attention in 2018. The Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, resigned after select committee questioning about the scandal.

A Lessons Learned Review by Wendy Williams concluded that what happened to those affected by the Windrush scandal was “foreseeable and avoidable”. Officials and ministers had not, she found, heeded warning signs from both inside and outside the Home Office.

The Library briefing The government’s response to the Windrush scandal has more information about the Windrush scandal and overall government support for victims in general. This briefing concentrates on financial compensation.

1. The Windrush Compensation Scheme

The Conservative government introduced two schemes to support victims of the Windrush scandal:

• The Windrush Scheme for Documentation, which enables long-term residents to get documentation to prove their right to be in the UK
• The Windrush Compensation Scheme, which enables people who suffered losses because they could not show that they had a right to live in the UK to apply for compensation

Both schemes are free of charge and have no deadline.

The Windrush Compensation Scheme was launched in April 2019. Eligible people can receive compensation for losses relating to:

• employment
• immigration fees
• housing
• health
• education
• driving licences
• banking
• welfare benefits
• homelessness
• detention and removal
• impact on life (for example, inconvenience, injury to feelings, missing major family events or not being able to travel)
• living costs (for example, rent, utilities, contributions towards food and household essentials, travel and prescription fees)

The criteria for, and levels of, compensation are set out in Home Office guidance. Under current scheme rules, the minimum payment to those entitled to compensation is £10,000. There is no cap on the total value of an award; some people have been offered six-figure sums.

Claims and payments

Claims for compensation can be made by people who have had losses because they could not prove their right to stay in the UK (‘primary claimants’), because their partner, child, brother, sister or parent could not prove their right to stay in the UK (‘close family members’), or because they represent the estate of a primary claimant.

The Home Office had paid out £127 million to almost 4,000 claims as of March 2026. The statistics also show:

• 11,759 claims had been lodged
• 9,495 claims, or 81%, had been "fully closed" 
• Of the fully closed claims, 6,239 had been found ineligible or entitled to zero compensation
• The other 3,256 fully closed claims had been found eligible for a payment

The department had yet to make an initial decision on 566 claims, some of which are recent.

2. Response to the compensation programme

Previous assessment of the scheme

The Windrush Compensation Scheme was initially criticised as too slow and bureaucratic, and not offering adequate compensation.

For example, a November 2021 report by the Home Affairs Committee concluded:

The purpose of the Windrush Compensation Scheme is to ensure that those who have suffered loss due to their inability to demonstrate their lawful status can receive the maximum amount of compensation to which they are entitled and to right some of the wrongs done by the Home Office. That is what makes it so deeply troubling that the Home Office’s handling of claims has repeated the same mistakes which lead to the Windrush scandal in the first place. Those who apply face a daunting application process without adequate support; they face unreasonable requests for evidence; they are left in limbo in the midst of inordinate delays. Too often, injustice has been compounded rather than compensated. This is unacceptable and must not continue.

The committee recommended that:

• the compensation scheme should be transferred to an independent organisation, as many Windrush campaigners have called for
• new arrangements should be introduced to ensure that everyone who wishes to access legal assistance with their claim is able to do so

The Home Office rejected the proposal to move the compensation scheme outside the department, saying that a handover would only lead to more delays.

Recent assessment of the scheme

More recent feedback on how the Windrush Compensation Scheme is operating was included in written evidence submitted to a Public Accounts Committee inquiry and published in May 2026.

Administrative improvements

Several pieces of written evidence submitted to the inquiry agreed that the Windrush Compensation Scheme had improved.

For example, the University of Leicester's Legal Advice Clinic stated that the Windrush Compensation Scheme “has dramatically improved over time, including recent changes which have resulted in significant improvements”. The clinic said that “it is clear that those in charge of the Scheme have learned from their experiences over time, making improvements based on what did/didn't work and, importantly, taking into account feedback from claimants and their advocates".

The Windrush Commissioner, Reverend Clive Foster, stated that there had been “welcome changes to the scheme” and that “successive improvements and changes to the Windrush Compensation Scheme represent both welcome progress and reflect flaws in the initial design of the scheme”.

Reverend Foster also stated that despite the welcome changes, that “many survivors continue to report that the Windrush Compensation Scheme is confusing, overwhelming, and re-traumatising, with limited proactive communication from the Home Office both in terms of case updates and a clear explanation of eligibility and entitlement to compensation”.

Giving oral evidence, Home Office permanent secretary Gareth Davies said that there had been "completely unacceptable" case backlogs in the past but that the average time for a decision was now down to two months.

Legal aid

Written evidence submitted to the inquiry also argued that the Windrush Compensation Scheme should include funded legal representation to support claimants with applications to the scheme.

For example, Clive Foster said “the scheme remains too complex for many survivors to navigate without expert support from advocates or lawyers” and that “targeted support would benefit survivors, improve application quality, reduce nil awards, and limit costly reviews”.

Reverend Foster also argued that “comparable schemes have funded legal support”.

Dr Jo Wilding of the University of Sussex led a research project on legal representation in the Windrush Compensation Scheme. The research found, in her summary, that "claimants received substantially higher offers of compensation when they had legal representation than when they did not".

Dr Wilding found that when a small group of claimants were given legal representation, the average compensation offered rose from £11,400 initially to £83,200 after assistance from lawyers. She offered the following explanation for the difference:

These benefits of legal representation arose through lawyers’ expertise in gathering historic evidence, taking witness statements from claimants and others to enable them to give a full and detailed account, advising on categories or heads of loss which claimants could claim, advising on whether an offer of compensation was adequate or not, making submissions on how the available evidence met the criteria and the standard of proof, challenging failures to follow the scheme’s own rules or caseworker guidance, identifying and challenging public law errors in decision making, immigration-specific legal expertise (in relation to scheme eligibility) and moral support including encouragement to continue in the process after an refusal or low offer of compensation.

[…]

Paying a fair fee to an expert lawyer for work on compensation schemes is likely to enhance the proportion of decisions which are legally correct according to the rules of any given compensation scheme. As well as improving the perception of fairness, as above, accurate first instance decisions should also limit the number of appeals or reviews.

The co-founder of the Windrush Defenders legal support group, Anthony Brown, has separately urged the government to make legal assistance available to all claimants.

The government's position remains that legal representation is not necessary. Home Office minister Lord Hanson of Flint said in March 2026 that "it does not require the arguing of complex points of law or determinations of liability".

Independence from the Home Office

Several pieces of written evidence argued that the Windrush Compensation Scheme should operate independently from the Home Office.

For example, the University of Leicester Legal Advice Clinic stated that the Home Office being responsible for administering the Windrush Compensation Scheme “risks re-traumatising claimants, and adversely affecting the number of people who choose to come forward”. That is because the same department is seen as responsible for the events giving rise to the need for compensation in the first place.

The clinic argued that a government body “wholly or partly responsible for the issues in respect of which claimants are being compensated, should not be involved in the assessment / administering of compensation”.

Similarly, written evidence submitted by Hackney Council stated that government compensation schemes such as the Windrush Compensation Scheme “should be overseen by Cabinet Office led or independent commissions, to ensure independence from those responsible for any wrongdoing experienced by victims”.

3. Changes introduced by the Labour government

The Labour Party manifesto for the 2024 general election stated: “we will ensure the victims of the appalling Windrush scandal have their voices heard and the compensation scheme is run effectively, with a new Windrush Commissioner”.

In October 2025, the Minister for Migration and Citizenship, Mike Tapp, published a written statement announcing changes to the Windrush Compensation Scheme.

The statement highlighted some changes the Labour government had already made, including appointing Clive Foster as the first Windrush Commissioner in June 2025 to “provide independent oversight of the government’s work to address the lessons of the Windrush scandal”. It also noted that a Windrush Unit had been re-established within the Home Office to “strengthen engagement with victims, their families, communities and stakeholder organisations”.

The statement also announced that the Labour government would make “significant changes” to the Windrush Compensation Scheme, including:

• the scheme will now compensate for the financial impact of lost pension contributions and pension fund withdrawals where people were unable to work
• the scope of compensation for employment-related losses will be expanded to reflect wage growth and account for the challenges of returning to work following a long period of unemployment
• the scheme will offer an advance payment to people seeking a review of their final compensation decision, with individuals able to receive up to 75% of their total compensation before the review process is fully concluded
• the scheme will now prioritise claims by people aged 75 and over

The Windrush Compensation Scheme Rules were updated in January 2026 to reflect these changes. The Windrush Commissioner welcomed the amendments, adding that "what matters most now is that these changes are implemented effectively and make a real difference for claimants".

The chair of the Windrush National Organisation, Bishop Desmond Jaddoo, similarly welcomed the changes but stated that “there is still a lot of work to be done” as “new issues are emerging every day of the week”. Colin McFarlane of the charity Justice 4 Windrush argued that the changes did not go far enough and that the government should provide legal aid for Windrush victims.

Mike Tapp has said that the government is working with the Windrush Commissioner to review the scheme’s application process. The Commissioner said in his written evidence to the Public Accounts Committee that the process “remains too complex for many survivors to navigate without expert support from advocates or lawyers”.

The government also introduced a £1.5 million support fund in 2025, “enabling trusted local organisations to help claimants gather evidence and complete applications”. The list of organisations being funded in 2026/27 was published in May 2026.