The British Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has found serious problems with the Home Office's management of the Windrush Compensation Scheme, especially its decision-making and communication with claimants which it says in its decision have "wider implications" on all persons accessing the compensation scheme, Human Rights Watch said today.
In 2019, the Home Office initiated the Windrush Compensation Scheme to "right the wrongs" that arose from its failure to issue members of the Windrush generation with documentation to prove their lawful status in the UK. The compensation scheme is meant to compensate tens of thousands of people and their relatives, who experienced serious losses and hardships, including loss of employment, pensions and health care.
"The ombudsman's decision illustrates once again that the Home Office's Windrush Compensation Scheme is not fit for purpose and is compounding the suffering of Windrush survivors," said Almaz Teffera, researcher on racism in Europe at Human Rights Watch. "It underscores that Windrush claimants need access to free legal representation to provide protection against arbitrary compensation decisions and denial of compensation for experienced losses and harm."
Starting in 1948, British governments invited the Windrush generation - people coming predominantly from former British colonies - to permanently live and work in the UK. In 2018, media reports revealed a large government scandal that saw them wrongfully entangled in efforts to restrict immigration to the UK. People lost jobs, pensions, education, health care and other basic rights; some even faced deportation and detention.
In April 2025, Charlotte Tobierre, whose father, Thomas, is a Windrush generation member, shared with Human Rights Watch a copy of a decision by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman in response to a complaint from her family.
Human Rights Watch documented the Tobierre family's situation in April 2023. Thomas Tobierre lost his job when the Home Office falsely deemed him to lack British citizenship. He was forced to empty his private pension savings, which the Home Office never recognized as losses it should compensate. The Home Office has generally argued that private pension losses are too hard to calculate, even though experts have shown how to and other government compensation schemes accounted for such losses.
The ombudsman ruled on March 26, 2025, that the Home Office had failed to "properly compensate" Thomas Tobierre because it excluded the loss of his private pension and found the Home Office decision-making and communication "confusing and inconsistent." The ombudsman said that the Home Office had made assurances to review its complaint handling and communication and to reconsider its decision to exclude compensation for private pension losses.
On April 22, 2025, Human Rights Watch sent a letter to the Home Office to seek its comments on a claimed private pension review. In its written response on May 15, the Home Office failed to provide any updates on progress or the contents of the review. It said that if changes are made, they would be applied retroactively and that the Home Office will "contact anyone who does benefit from such [a] change with an additional offer of compensation."
Charlotte Tobierre showed Human Rights Watch a letter from the Home Office, dated June 24, in which it merely acknowledged that it had "missed several key opportunities to inform him [her father] about the exclusion of occupational and private pension losses under the WCS" and that it had misled him with requests for information. The letter fails to set out any impending reforms or to indicate whether it would provide additional compensation for his loss.
In April, the government announced a £1.5 million advocacy fund for community groups to support Windrush claimants in their pursuit for compensation. This fund falls short of long-standing demands for claimants' access to free legal representation. In its response to Human Rights Watch on May 15, the Home Office referred to the advocacy fund and said it had no plans to provide individual legal aid for Windrush claimants.
Jeremy Crook, the executive of the UK charity Action for Race Equality, which had previously provided funding to grassroots groups to support Windrush claimants, told Human Rights Watch that the "advocacy fund [… t]hough welcome […] cannot substitute for proper legal representation."
On June 16, the UK charity JUSTICE released its second report on the need for Windrush claimants to get free legal representation. Their review of the impact of legal support in 17 Windrush compensation cases found that compensation offers significantly increased with the support of a lawyer. Lawyers for Windrush claimants are currently appealing a 2024 High Court decision that upheld the government's decision to deny Windrush claimants legal aid.
Nicola Burgess, a solicitor who oversees the Windrush Legal Initiative, which currently assists over 60 Windrush claimants, told Human Rights Watch that the new Labour government "perpetuates the myth sold by the previous government that the scheme is simple enough to navigate without a lawyer." She described the compensation scheme as retraumatizing, protracted, and "made worse by the Home Office sometimes failing to apply their own guidance correctly or to consider evidence provided." The Tobierre family told Human Right Watch this reflected their experience.
In 2024, as part of an overall assessment of the compensation scheme, the parliamentary ombudsman had already found that the Home Office was "making wrong decisions and refusing payment to those who are entitled to it." The ombudsman claims to have received 68 complaints since 2021 and complainants had been awarded over £430,000 in compensation for wrongfully denied payments.
Human Rights Watch found in its 2023 research that the compensation scheme was not fit for purpose echoing campaigners and lawyers who had long called for urgent reforms.
The UK's Human Rights Act gives effect in domestic law to the right to an effective remedy under the European Convention on Human Rights, which requires that the remedy be adequate, prompt, and accessible. A similar right appears in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), both binding on the UK government.
In its review of the UK government's compliance with the ICERD, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination found in its concluding observations issued in August 2024 that the compensation scheme's "complexity […] creates undue burden on the claimants" and recommended the government simplify it to ensure fair, prompt, and effective access to compensation.
"Providing real redress for the harm by the Home Office against Windrush families is a moral responsibility as well as a legal one," Teffera said. "The government should swiftly adopt the necessary reforms on private pensions and grant free legal representation to Windrush claimants."
