The Home Office has quietly overhauled the rules that determine when foreign nationals can challenge immigration refusals through the Administrative Review (AR) process. An updated version of the AR case-worker guidance, issued on 16 October 2026, removes the entire section covering reviews for decisions under the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS), the closed Service Providers from Switzerland route and S2 Healthcare Visitors. In practice this means that no applicant refused under those categories after 16 October will have an in-country right of administrative review – they must instead lodge an appeal or make a fresh application. The change consolidates a trend that began in January 2026, when the government closed the Switzerland route and signalled that AR would be phased out for most EUSS decisions. The new guidance also clarifies that where a sponsor licence is revoked, refusal decisions on that ground remain reviewable. Employers that rely on intra-company transfers or the Global Business Mobility routes will welcome that clarification, but EUSS employers now face added uncertainty when resolving status errors for existing European staff. For businesses the immediate impact is procedural. Human-resources teams must update their worker-support playbooks: an EUSS employee refused an extension can no longer seek the quick, paper-based AR remedy. Instead, they may need to lodge an out-of-country appeal or pursue “error correction” outside the statutory AR regime, both of which are slower and more expensive. Time-critical travel—for example to start a secondment—could therefore be delayed. Practically, employers should audit their European workforce and ensure that staff use the View and Prove service to confirm their digital status well before any travel or assignment. Where a refusal arises, legal advice should be sought immediately to determine if an appeal or fresh application is the better route. Given the complexity of the post-Brexit framework, proactive monitoring remains the best defence against surprise refusals and the loss of an AR safety-net.
