Turkish Business Visa Refusals Soar 78%, Echoing Windrush

By Amara Osei

Settlement grants for Turkish nationals on ECAA business visas collapsed 78% in a year, dropping from 3,378 in the first half of 2025 to 745 for the same period in 2026, Home Office data shows. The plunge has triggered accusations that the department has failed to learn the lessons of the Windrush scandal.

The ECAA route — the European Community Association Agreement visa — has long allowed Turkish nationals to settle in the UK by setting up a business. Since the start of this year, lawyers and MPs report hundreds of refusals for indefinite leave to remain, with rejection letters riddled with basic errors, invented requirements and what critics call a disregard for human tragedy.

The shift appears to target applications lodged from September 2025, weeks before Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told Labour conference delegates: “In solving this crisis, you may not always like what I do. We will have to question some of the assumptions and legal constraints that have lasted for a generation and more.”

What do the numbers show?

• Administrative reviews of refused ECAA applications jumped from 145 in 2025 to 395 between January and mid-August 2026, according to a freedom of information request.
• Successful settlement grants fell from several thousand a year to a few hundred since January.
• Lawyers told the Guardian that applications lodged from September 2025 face delays well beyond the usual six-month processing time.

The Home Office insists nothing has changed. A spokesperson said: “There has been no change to how ECAA settlement applications are considered. Every application continues to be considered on its individual circumstances, in line with the published rules and guidance.”

Former Foreign Secretary David Lammy disputes that. He said there “seems to be a sudden change” in government policy, one that has “devastated” lives and evokes memories of Windrush.

Who is being refused?

Many of those denied arrived in the UK within the past seven years and have built successful businesses here. The refusal letters reveal how the department is applying the rules.

One woman, diagnosed with cancer during a Covid-era trip to Turkey when the NHS restricted such care, started treatment there after her medical team warned that transferring care “carried significant clinical risk.” The Home Office refused her because she “chose” to begin treatment in Turkey. After a review, the department told her in October that she and her three young children “should now leave the United Kingdom.”

A window cleaner was told his business was not legitimate because he lacked a social media presence — a requirement that does not exist. In that refusal, later overturned, caseworkers said they had been “unable to locate a website for your business” and falsely claimed he had not supplied a complete set of bank statements.

Another woman, whose father in Turkey has terminal Alzheimer's, was denied because the Home Office said his condition had been “known for several years,” so her absences from the UK did not stem from an “urgent unforeseen situation.” In a separate case, the department wrongly counted the applicant's days abroad, incorrectly claiming more than 180 days out of the country within a 12-month period.

Lawyers say such cases were previously approved routinely under guidance on compassionate circumstances, until the harsher shift for applications lodged from last September.

Why does Windrush loom over this?

The approach appears to contradict recommendations from the independent Windrush review, which then-Home Secretary Priti Patel accepted and promised to act on. Those recommendations included clearer guidance on the burden and standard of proof, more direct contact with applicants, and revised criteria for assessing vulnerable applicants.

Lammy, the MP for Tottenham — a constituency with a large Turkish-speaking population — said: “I have been contacted by constituents whose lives have been devastated by what seems to be a sudden change in Home Office policy – people who have built their lives and families here and played by the rules.”

“I can't help remembering the Windrush scandal when I hear these terrible stories,” he said. “The Home Office needs to urgently revisit and consider the Lessons Learned review. This is entirely unacceptable. I would like to see justice for Britain's Turkish-origin community.”

With administrative reviews piling up and the Home Office denying any policy shift, the standoff now turns on whether ministers order a review of the refusal wave — or leave thousands of Turkish-origin entrepreneurs to fight case by case.