The No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) condition makes women three times more likely to be subjected to violence against women and girls (VAWG). It is a draconian manifestation of immigration control, which prevents migrants with insecure immigration status from accessing most forms of housing and welfare benefits. It is estimated that at least 32,000 victim-survivors are ineligible for state support due to NRPF. In practice, as the cost of refuge accommodation is generally met through housing benefit, migrant victim-survivors with NRPF are often turned away from non-specialist support providers and refuges before they are able to receive support.
During the parliamentary passage of the Domestic Abuse Act, a unanimous VAWG sector campaign, led by Southall Black Sisters, called on the Government to ensure that migrant victim-survivors with NRPF were included within its protections. The campaign had straightforward asks, shaped by decades of frontline expertise on what is needed to support migrant victim-survivors: extend access to public funds and the right to settlement to all victim-survivors, regardless of immigration status, through the DDVC-DVILR scheme[1]. Although the Government refused to provide long-term support for migrant victim-survivors through the Domestic Abuse Act, it established the Support for Migrant Victims (SMV) fund as a temporary measure while it considered longer-term options.
The SMV fund was set up in 2021 as a one-year ‘pilot’ providing 500 victim-survivors of domestic abuse and their children with NRPF with limited housing and subsistence costs from a last resort No Recourse Fund, regardless of immigration status. Since 2021, the SMV scheme has been delivered by a UK-wide partnership led by Southall Black Sisters including BAWSO, Shakti Women’s Aid, Foyle Women’s Aid, Ashiana Sheffield and Birmingham and Solihull Women’s Aid. The fund also provides advocacy to assist women in accessing legal immigration advice and other wrap-around services such as counselling and support groups, with the majority of these services being funded in kind by SBS and our delivery partners.
Since its inception, the fund has supported hundreds of women each year. In its first year, 2021-22, 302 women were supported, rising to 530 in 2022-23 and 603 in 2023-24. A further 552 women were supported in 2024-25, rising to 607 in 2025-26 – the highest number supported by the scheme to date. In total, the SMV has supported almost 2,600 women over five years.
These figures demonstrate both the sustained demand for the SMV and the scale of the gap that remains. As highlighted above, at least 32,000 migrant victim-survivors with NRPF are estimated to need support. Against that wider level of need, the number of women reached through the SMV remains a small proportion of those who may require support. Five years of sustained demand for a scheme originally introduced as a temporary measure is therefore significant: it demonstrates that the need the SMV was established to address has neither been temporary nor resolved.
Numbers alone, however, do not capture the complexity of the cases supported through the scheme. Migrant victim-survivors with NRPF frequently face multiple and intersecting barriers to safety, including insecure immigration status, destitution and homelessness, alongside the impact of domestic abuse. The support they need is therefore rarely limited to emergency accommodation or subsistence. It can require intensive specialist advocacy, immigration advice, help to secure safe housing, counselling and other wrap-around support, often involving several agencies and continuing well beyond the 12 weeks of support funded through the scheme, particularly where a woman’s immigration and longer-term housing position remains unresolved.
This is what five years of frontline delivery across the SMV partnership tells us about the value of the scheme. We have seen women who would otherwise have had no safe accommodation being able to leave abuse and be housed safely; women supported at a critical point while steps are taken to address their immigration status and longer-term safety; and women able to access specialist advocacy, immigration advice and wider wrap-around support from which they might otherwise have been excluded. For some women who have lived with abuse for years, the SMV has provided their first meaningful route to safety.
But our experience also exposes the limits of relying on a temporary and time-limited scheme to respond to structural barriers. We continue to see women at risk of falling through the gaps once the funded period of support ends, even though their immigration, housing and other support needs remain unresolved. This experience demonstrates both the vital role the SMV plays in providing an immediate route to safety and the need for support that reflects the longer-term realities facing migrant victim-survivors.
The Home Office evaluation report covered the SMV pilot’s work during its first year, which ran from April 2021 to March 2022, and recognised it as a vital safety net. Alongside the Home Office’s evaluation, Southall Black Sisters commissioned an independent evaluation by the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit (CWASU) at London Metropolitan University. This evaluation, ‘Living at the Edge’, acknowledged the SMV as a vital temporary stopgap but emphasised the need for a long-term solution, including scrapping the NRPF condition and extending the DDVC-DVILR scheme (renamed to MVDAC-DVILR in 2024). In the absence of a permanent solution, the pilot has been extended three times, in no small part due to our continued campaigning, and it is now set to end in March 2027.
Five years on, in its first VAWG Strategy, the Government pledged continued investment in the SMV scheme. The current £2.4 million funding provides greater sustainability for the delivery of this vital support.
The current SMV scheme is funded until 31 March 2027, but there is, as yet, no confirmed position on its continuation beyond that date. With the structural barriers facing migrant victim-survivors remaining unresolved, continued and adequate funding for the SMV beyond March 2027 is essential to ensure that women are not left without a route to safety.
Ultimately, long-term safety requires structural reform. We therefore once again call on the Government to scrap the NRPF condition, extend the combined MVDAC-DVILR model to all victim-survivors regardless of immigration status, and introduce long-term and holistic support mechanisms for migrant victim-survivors. In the meantime, while these structural barriers remain, the Government must maintain the SMV as an essential safety net while pursuing the life-saving reforms needed so that migrant victim-survivors are ultimately able to access safety and protection on equal terms.
[1] The Destitution Domestic Violence Concession (DDVC) (renamed the Migrant Victims of Domestic Abuse Concession (MVDAC)) provides eligible victim-survivors with access to 12 weeks of benefits, as they regularize their status independent of the perpetrator through the Domestic Violence Indefinite Leave to Remain (DVILR) rule. Crucially, this model is limited to victim-survivors on certain visa types only.
