Employees and Consultants

Solange is PRCBC’s supervising solicitor and CEO.  She was admitted as a solicitor on 3 April 2006. Her continuous experience of practice in nationality and immigration law extends back even further. Solange is a Law Society Level 3 Advanced Accredited Immigration Supervisor and is an experienced trainer for PRCBC and others. Solange currently specialises in children’s rights to British citizenship (and the rights of adults whose citizenship rights were not secured during their childhoods in the UK). She is heavily committed to this work.

She undertakes complex casework and litigation to confirm or register people’s rights to British citizenship. Her focus is on work to change barriers in law, policy and practice that cause thousands of children who grow up in the UK, including children born here, to do so without their citizenship rights being secured. She also uses her expertise and experience in awareness raising and policy work.

In 2014, Solange was shortlisted for Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year in the Immigration category. Solange is the 2017 Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year in the Children’s Rights category.

Solange has been widely published. For example, she is co-author of a series of articles in the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law Journal on rights to registration as a British citizen covering: Rights to British Citizenship Through Registration, Judicial Review of the Registration Fee, The section 3(1) discretion to register children and The requirement of good character. She also contributed to “Citizenship in Times of Turmoil?” (Theory, practice and policy).

Higher court cases where Solange has acted as instructing solicitor include:

Akinyemi v SSHD
This case concerns the application for a requirement of good character to an entitlement to registered as a British citizen under section 1(4) of the British Nationality Act 1981. The claimant is born in the UK, has lived here his entire life, is 43 years old, and was first entitled to be registered when he was 4 years old. The case also concerns the meaning of “exceptional circumstances” for the purposes of registering an adult under section 4L(1)(c) of the British Nationality Act who would have been able to become a British citizen but for such circumstances in the past.

See PRCBC’s practitioners’ note HERE.

LW v SSHD
This case concerns a refusal to register a child, who is settled with her mother in the UK having lived here for over 7 years, as a British citizen under section 3(1). The reasons given for the refusal rely on the child’s father not being settled or British (he is not present in the UK having been refused a visa to join his family). The case also concerns when new evidence should be considered in the Home Office internal review process. It is awaiting a decision on permission to apply for judicial review in the High Court.

Roehrig v SSHD [2024] EWCA Civ 240; [2023] EWHC 31 (Admin)
This case led to the passing of the British Nationality (Regularisation of Past Practice) Act 2023 that secured the British citizenship of hundreds of thousands of people many of whom born in the UK before 1 October 2000 to EU citizens. The case concerned the meaning of “settled” in the British Nationality Act 1981 and how this related to EU citizens exercising Treaty rights of free movement.

See PRCBC’s practitioners’ notes HERE and HERE.

PRCBC & O v SSHD [2022] UKSC 3; [2021] EWCA Civ 193; [2019] EWHC 3536 (Admin)
This case led to the exemption of looked after children from the fee for their registration as a British citizen and to the waiver for other children who cannot afford that fee. The case concerned the lawfulness of this fee. It established that the fee had been unlawfully set by a failure to have regard to the best interests of children. An alternative challenge that the fee was unlawful because it made the right to be registered as a British citizenship widely inaccessible was rejected.

See PRCBC’s practitioners’ note on children’s citizenship fee exemption and waiver (June 2022) HERE.

Ojeh v SSHD (CO/4869/2020)
This case led to changes to Home Office guidance and practice that enable many children who have lived in the UK for 10 years or who are in care to be registered as British citizens. The case concerned section the discretion to register a child under section 3(1) of the British Nationality Act 1981. It was settled with four other similar claims (in which Solange also acted) following years of litigation by Solange that had led to dozens of children being registered in similar circumstances.

See PRCBC’s practitioners’ note HERE.

OGA v SSHD (CO/1734/2017)
This case led to the grant of ILR to a survivor of domestic violence. The case concerned a challenge to the exclusion of partners of persons settled in the UK under immigration rules relating to Tier 1 Migrants from the rules applying to survivors of domestic violence who are on routes to settlement.

Carlos Cyrus v SSHD [2016] EWHC 918 (Admin)
This case led to the reinstatement of ILR after a deportation order was revoked because the person against whom it had been applied had wrongly been deprived of an in-country right of appeal. The case concerned the inadequacy of a grant of limited leave to remain pending the conclusion of an appeal that the person should have been permitted to bring before their ILR had been taken away.

BE (litigation friend) v SSHD (unreported)
This case led the claimant being registered as a British citizen under section 3(1) of the British Nationality Act 1981. The case concerned the question of where a child’s future clearly lay and the need to address an outstanding application for leave to remain pending resolution of the child’s registration application. The child had been brought to the UK before the age of one and lived in the UK for over a decade and the court concluded that the only basis on which it could be doubted that his future clearly lay in the UK was if he was removable – hence the need to resolve the outstanding leave application (which was granted in due course).

T v SSHD [2014] EWHC 2453 (Admin)
This case concerned the Destitute Domestic Violence Concession and ILR under the Domestic Violence provisions in relation to post-flight spouses of refugees.

Agyeikum v SSHD [2013] EWHC 1828 (Admin)
This case led to the claimant being granted leave to remain. The case concerned fresh claims, mental health and unlawful detention.

JB (Jamaica) v SSHD [2013] EWCA Civ 666
This case led to the removal of Jamaica from the list of countries generally presumed safe as this applied to LGBT+ people. The case concerned unlawful detention under the Detained Fast Track (DFT) for asylum claims and the certification of the claimant’s asylum claim as clearly unfounded because of his Jamaican nationality. An appeal by the Home Office to the Supreme Court was dismissed.

BN v SSHD [2011] EWHC 2367 (Admin)
This case led to a mother being returned to the UK after she had been separated from her children by being unlawful removed while her fresh claim remained pending.

Ali v SSHD [2007] EWHC 1983 (Admin)
This case led to the registration as British citizens of the child claimants and affirmed the significance of where the future of a child lies when considering the discretion to register children as British citizens under section 3(1) of the British Nationality Act 1981. The case concerned a challenge to the refusal to register the children, all of whom settled along with their mother, because their father was not settled at the time of their applications – the reason for that being delay on the part of the Home Office in dealing with his settlement application.