Windrush Commissioner WONT push for compensation scheme's removal from Home Office despite new report recommendation
Participants in the report stated how they felt concerned about a “conflict of interest” and that they considered the Home Office ‘unfit’ to run the scheme
Windrush Commissioner WONT push for compensation scheme’s removal from Home Office despite new report recommendation
The Commissioner says he will continue working with the Home Office to improve the scheme.
STORY BY MELISSA SIGODO
JUNE 9, 2026
The Windrush Commissioner will not be pushing for the compensation scheme to be made independent from the Home Office despite a new report’s recommendation.
Civil rights charity Black Equity Organisation (BEO) has released a damning report into the housing related consequences of the Windrush scandal which saw mainly Black people experience a “loss of identity and displacement due to housing and citizenship issues” caused by the Home Office.
During a launch of the Windrush Legacy – Homes Lost, Lives Shattered report at the Houses on Parliament on June 8, survivors shared their accounts of going through homelessness and being threatened with eviction after wrongly losing their rights to be in the country.
One survivor revealed that after successfully claiming compensation from the Home Office scheme, she was then forced to use the award to pay rent arrears.
In the report, eight years since the scandal was exposed, participants stated they felt concerned about a “conflict of interest” with the Home Office running the compensation scheme and that they considered the department ‘unfit’ to do so.
But when asked by the Community Reporter if the compensation scheme should be moved from the Home Office following calls from victims and the recommendation made in the report - Windrush Commissioner Clive Foster stated that he ‘agreed in principle’ but stopped short of calling for the scheme’s removal.
He said: “I am definitely looking at working with the Home Office on how they are managing the scheme and that it works for the people it was designed to do.”
Calls for the compensation scheme to be removed have been echoed by lawyers, campaigners, advocates and academics involved in Grenfell, Hillsborough, and Windrush scandal justice campaigns.
In a open letter written to the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and published by Black Lives Matter UK last month, the collective demanded for the scheme to be expanded, for legal assistance to be provided and for it to be moved away from the Home Office.
In the letter, advocates labelled the Home Office’s compensation scheme a “profound failure” with campaigners citing research by law reform charity JUSTICE and the University of Sussex and Dechert LLP which ‘laid bare the disparity.’
It read: “Two-thirds (66%) of all applicants are initially refused any payment at all. The scheme's success rate is the lowest of any major state redress scheme.
“The application form is 44 pages long—more than four times longer than the form for child abuse survivors in Lambeth, and three times longer than the Post Office Horizon form.
“Despite this evidence, the Windrush scheme remains inside the Home Office, the very department that caused the scandal. It offers no guaranteed legal assistance, forcing traumatised, elderly victims to fight alone against a system designed to minimise payouts.”
Speaking at the launch, researcher Euen Herbert who was affected by hostile environment policies stated that the Windrush scandal is “ongoing” as victims struggle to get justice and he personally faces challenges in finding work after being left unemployed for years.
When we asked the Commissioner how his words would now make a difference to the Home Office despite the department being told numerous times of its ‘failings’, he stated that it would not ‘just be his words’ but that it would “require a commitment” from government.
As well as removing the scheme from the Home Office, other recommendations made by BEO’s report include mandatory Windrush training for councils and housing departments and abolishing the Right to Rent scheme which they say has been found to “cause discrimination and harm to Windrush survivors and ethnic minorities at large in the private rented sector.”
The report further recommended that the Windrush Commissioner and the Home Office should work with African High Commissions to notify and assist African Windrush survivors, “especially those locked out of the UK.”