WINDRUSH

Substantially Different? R (Hippolyte) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 1493

17 January 2026 by Matthew Leitch

Background

The Applicant, a national of St Lucia, made an application on 2 December 2022 for ILR under Category 4 of the Windrush Scheme. Her father was a member of the Windrush generation and entered the UK in 1956. He was granted British citizenship in 2018 [4]-[19].

To fall within Category 4, an applicant should satisfy the following criteria [7]:

1. A person in the UK,
2. who is a child of a Commonwealth citizen parent,
3. where the child was born in the UK or arrived in the UK before the age of 18,
4. and has been continuously resident in the UK since their birth or arrival,
5. and the parent was settled before 1 January 1973 or has the right of abode (or met these criteria but is now a British citizen).

Although the Applicant satisfied the other criteria, because of her repeated travel to St Lucia since arriving in the UK in August 2000, the Respondent refused her application on the basis that she failed to satisfy criterion (d) above [18]-[19].