Windrush victims are in line for £10k payout as Priti Patel is due to announce increase in minimum amount of compensation

• Under the new reforms, those who can show an ‘impact’ on their life from the scandal will be immediately paid £10,000, according to The Sunday Times
• Compensation for Windrush scandal victims has been criticised as too slow 
• People who came to the UK as children on their parents’ passports were caught up in a clampdown on illegal immigration introduced in 2012 

Victims of the Windrush scandal are to be handed ‘turbocharged’ compensation payments of at least £10,000.

Home Secretary Priti Patel is expected to announce plans today to increase the minimum amount to £10,000 and the maximum to £100,000.

Payments begin this week and will be applied retrospectively. Compensation for Windrush victims, who came to Britain from the Caribbean to work from the 1950s onwards, has been criticised for being too slow. 

Last month Alexandra Ankrah, the most senior black Home Office official working on the scheme, quit, saying it was not fit for purpose.

Under the reforms, those who can show an ‘impact’ on their life from the scandal will get £10,000 immediately, the Sunday Times reported.  

They can then launch a full application which could lead to them being handed larger sums. Payments will be made starting this week and the changes will be applied retrospectively.

The final payments could total somewhere between £90m and £250m.

Victims of the Windrush scandal are to be handed ‘turbocharged’ compensation payments of at least £10,000 as Home Secretary Priti Patel is due to announce a rise in the minimum and maximum compensation amounts. Pictured: Sabtir Singh of the Windrush campaigners delivering a petition to Downing Street signed by more than 130,000 people in July 2020, calling for action to address failings which led to the scandal [File photo]

A Whitehall source told the newspaper: ‘As soon as they can show an impact on life under the terms of the scheme, they will receive a £10,000 payment. They will be fast tracked and won’t have to wait for the whole application to be assessed.’

Many of those caught up in the Windrush scandal arrived to the UK as children on the passports of their parents aboard the Empire Windrush (pictured) [File photo]

The Windrush scandal came about as a result of the government’s ‘hostile environment’ policy, which was brought in by then home secretary Theresa May in 2012.

It was intended to stop illegal migrants settling in the UK but ended up causing profound problems for entirely legal migrants from the Windrush generation.

Many of them arrived as children on the passports of their parents – who had the legal right to settle at the time – but then lacked the documentation to prove their right to remain in the UK decades later under the ‘hostile environment’ policy.

Many were wrongly deported, detained or stripped of their homes and jobs.

A compensation scheme was launched in April last year and has already made payments of more than £2 million but the system has been criticised by claimants for being too slow.

Figures published in October showed only 12 per cent of victims received the money they were owed.  

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