Downing Street insists Home Office will be able to cope when millions of EU citizens apply for 'settled status' to stay in UK

Downing Street has insisted the Home Office will be able to cope when millions of EU citizens apply for “settled status” to guarantee their post-Brexit future.

Fears have been expressed that the Government could be overwhelmed when the 3.2 million EU nationals living in the UK apply for documentation to guarantee their right to remain.

But the Prime Minister’s official spokeswoman has said Theresa May is “confident” the Home Office will be able to handle the huge administrative task.

A report published by the Institute for Government in May this year warned that if immigration application processes were not simplified ahead of Brexit an additional 5,000 civil servants would need to be recruited.

Under Mrs May’s plans, those EU citizens living in the UK will be able to apply for “settled status” which will effectively give them indefinite leave to remain here post-Brexit.

Any EU citizen who has lived here continuously for five years will be eligible to apply and those who have not accrued that amount of time will be allowed to stay and apply once they have.

The Government is yet to formally set the cut off date for people to qualify but it will fall at some point between March 29 of this year when Article 50 was triggered and the actual date of Brexit in March 2019.

There will then be a two year grace period in which EU nationals will be able to apply.

That means the Government could face the prospect of having to process approximately 4,300 applications a day, every day, during that two year period.

However, the Government has downplayed the size of the challenge.

In its EU citizens blueprint it promises the application process will be “as streamlined and user-friendly as possible” while a voluntary application scheme to be launched ahead of Brexit will help ease the administrative burden.

The Government is also likely to point to the millions of passport applications it processes every year as evidence that it is capable of handling such a large scale project.

The Prime Minister’s official spokeswoman told a Westminster media briefing on Tuesday: “We are confident the Home Office has the necessary resources.”