Tuckett: More than just a new name
The amount of immigration and asylum advice available across the UK “does not meet the need or demand”, the rebranded Immigration Advice Authority (IAA) has said.
The IAA was until yesterday the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC), and the Immigration Services Commissioner, John Tuckett, insisted that the change was more than just a new name.
“We are making our services more accessible and understandable. We intend to take a more robust approach to regulation and enforcement while supporting sector development, working closely with our partners,” he said.
“Our mission is clear – to protect vulnerable individuals from unregulated advisers while ensuring the provision of high-quality immigration advice across the UK.”
Immigration is a unique practice area in that it is not a reserved legal activity but is subject to statutory regulation for those who are not qualified lawyers. The IAA regulates over 3,700 individual immigration advisers and 2,000 organisations.
The IAA’s new corporate plan for 2025-27 said the challenges for the sector included a lack of public awareness about who could legally provide immigration advice, and “evidence that advice available across the UK does not meet the need or demand”.
It explained: “This creates a vacuum into which illegal operators readily move. Developing new ways of providing advice, and enhancing registered adviser numbers and availability, are all needed.”
Given the lack of any professional membership body – aside from the voluntary Immigration Law Practitioners Association – the IAA said “we need to extend our activities into developing the quality and availability of immigration advice by… identifying the areas where supply and demand are not in balance and actively encouraging people to become advisers”.
Further, the varying sources of advice and multiple regulators, all with their own ways of working, “creates a confusing landscape, which could be exploited by illegal operators”.
Improved regulatory collaboration – with the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Bar Standards Board and CILEX Regulation – “is needed to ensure good quality advice is easily accessible to any seeker of advice”.
The IAA said the sector has “many advice providers who seek to subvert immigration rules”. Whilst some worked at regulated bodies, most did not and were “often deliberately acting outside of the law”.
The IAA is funded by £5.4m from the government, with 80% of it spent on the salaries of 64 employees all based in their homes across the UK. There is no central office.
It said it needed a “new funding model that enables IAA activities to expand without detriment to the public purse” – the plan suggested this could be the IAA retaining fees and charges levied from advisers, as other regulators do, “replacing the current practice of all fees being remitted to the Home Office”.
Seema Malhotra, minister for migration and citizenship, said: “Immigration advice is critical to the effective running of a coherent, efficient, and fair immigration system.
“This government is committed to ensuring advice seekers receive the advice they need through an efficient and regulated advice sector. The launch of the Immigration Advice Authority provides an excellent opportunity to enhance the work of the immigration advice sector.”
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