Almost half a million pounds in compensation has been secured following investigations by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) for people wrongly denied payment by the Windrush Compensation Scheme.
The Ombudsman found that the Scheme, set up by the Home Office in response to the Windrush scandal, is making wrong decisions and refusing payment to those who are entitled to it.
By publishing its findings in a new report, ‘Spotlight on the Windrush Compensation Scheme’, PHSO is hopeful that this will present an opportunity for the Home Office to review and make improvements to the current mechanisms in place for compensating people affected by Windrush.
The report reveals why the Scheme is making wrong decisions.
These are:
- telling people they were not eligible for compensation by wrongly applying their own rules
- not always looking at all the evidence provided
- applying the rules even when they led to unfair outcomes for some people. It is likely that the unfairness of some of the rules may have affected more people than the cases we have seen.
Since 2021 the Ombudsman has received 46 complaints about the Compensation Scheme and has asked it to look again at nine of those. Some of those are still under review, but so far PHSO has helped individuals who complained about their treatment to secure a total of £432,592.
Rebecca Hilsenrath, Parliamentary Ombudsman, said:
“The Windrush Compensation Scheme was set up to right the wrongs of a scandal that inflicted harm on very many people. But our evidence shows that further harm and injustice are still being caused by failings in the way the Scheme is working.
“Our report found people who had applied for compensation were being wrongly denied the money they were owed. We found recurrent reasons for this, suggesting these were not one-off issues but systemic problems.
“The people who brought their complaints to us have helped to shine a light on some unwelcome realities. By listening to them and working together with the Scheme – which has been open to reconsidering the issues we have raised - we have helped many people secure financial remedy. Our intervention has also resulted in wider changes which have the potential to positively affect applicants seeking reparation.
“We hope that the issues raised in this report will help to inform the approach the Home Office applies when managing sensitive issues in future. We also hope that further improvements are made to the Scheme to support the Windrush generation and their families. There could also be lessons for the Government to learn in how it approaches other compensation schemes, for example on the Post Office Horizon scandal, the Infected Blood Inquiry, and the maladministration in relation to women’s state pension age.”
Rachelle Romeo’s father Auckland Elwaldo Romeo came to the UK from Antigua as a child in 1959. After his passport was stolen, he applied for a new one in 2005 but was told he was never on record as living in the UK.
Rachelle, 40, a mother-of-three from Enfield, supported her father through the ‘frightening’ and ‘stressful’ process of proving his right to live in the UK, which took 13 years. She applied to the Compensation Scheme for restitution for the toll this had taken on her mental health and ability to work and was awarded £20,000.
However, the Ombudsman saw that the Scheme had not considered all the evidence about the impact the process of proving her father’s right to live in the UK had on her. For example, they did not speak to her GP or counsellor or properly consider witness statements from colleagues about the impact on her mental health. After the Ombudsman asked the Scheme to reconsider, the offer was increased to £70,000, which Rachelle is currently challenging.
Rachelle said:
“Fighting for my father’s right to stay in the UK was incredibly stressful. It was dragged out for 13 years while they made us go from pillar to post to find information and threatened to deport my father after almost 60 years of living here. It broke my resilience. I was unable to work for several months and I’m still on medication for anxiety six years after this was resolved.
“When I went to the Windrush Compensation Scheme I felt as if they disregarded what I went through. It seemed like they didn’t want to acknowledge what had happened and all the onus was on me to tell them where to look for evidence. This was at a time when my mental health had crashed and I was constantly in fight mode.
“Their initial offer was insulting for 13 years of my family being ripped apart. How can I heal when even six years after my dad’s passport was issued, I still feel like I have to prove to them how awful that experience was? I haven’t had closure, and that is an extension of the pain they initially put us through.”
The aim of the report is to encourage people to complain if they have had a bad experience when applying for compensation through the Scheme.
Rebecca Hilsenrath added:
“Given the number of people affected by the Windrush scandal, there may be many others who are unhappy with their experience with the Windrush Compensation Scheme. I encourage anyone who has a concern to bring their complaint to us. We’re completely independent, free, open to anyone who doesn’t feel their voice has been heard and we’re focused on fairness. If you feel you have been let down, we want to help by getting to the truth.”