About Asylum Aid#
Asylum Aid has provided legal representation to people seeking asylum for about thirty years. Its focus is on people the system finds hardest to hear: unaccompanied children, survivors of torture, gender-based violence and trafficking, and people who are stateless, meaning no country recognises them as a national. It uses legal aid but adds its own funding so its lawyers can spend the time cases need, and its 2025 annual report records an "Excellence" rating from the Legal Aid Agency's peer review. In 2020 it joined the Helen Bamber Foundation's group of charities, keeping its own register entry. It also trains new immigration advisers in parts of England and Wales with little free advice.
How people reach it#
Asylum Aid does not run a public advice line. Its contact page has an email address and a form whose subjects include referrals, and its pages say children usually come to it through social workers, community groups and other charities, often as a last resort. In Westminster it is part of a welfare advice partnership with Citizens Advice and Age UK, with advisers who speak community languages, and with partners it gives immigration advice to people sleeping rough in six north London boroughs. If you are not sure whether it can take your case, a support worker or adviser can ask on your behalf.
Its guide for stateless people#
The most detailed help Asylum Aid publishes is a guide to statelessness, covering the Home Office's statelessness rules since January 2024. It explains that applicants must establish who they are, and that anyone without identity documents should explain why on the application form; that a full Home Office file can be requested to support a claim; and that free legal advice is limited, because legal aid does not cover statelessness applications in England and Wales, although it does in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Asylum Aid gives free advice and representation on these applications itself, with a university law clinic and pro bono law firms.
On what follows a grant, the guide says you receive an eVisa rather than a residence card, and that an error such as a wrong name or date of birth can be reported through GOV.UK. A recognised stateless person can apply for a stateless person's travel document. It also notes what is closed to people without permission to stay, such as opening a bank account or renting a home.
What this means for a stateless person's name#
Most people with an eVisa change their name with their own country first, because the Home Office expects the eVisa to match a passport. A stateless person has no such passport, and the Home Office's guidance on names recognises that: where someone has no foreign passport or identity card, it will change the eVisa name for a recognised stateless person, as it does for refugees. It is made as a transfer of conditions application, or as a no time limit application for someone with indefinite leave, supported by a deed poll and papers showing the name in everyday use. A stateless person's travel document issued in the earlier name is cancelled, so a new one has to be applied for.
If the Home Office has simply recorded your name wrongly, that is an error to report, not a change of name. For the steps in order, read changing your name if you are not a British citizen and your eVisa and UKVI account. If your name has only one part, can I have just one name? explains how British documents show it.
This page describes what Asylum Aid publishes on its own website, read on 26 October 2026. Asylum Aid has not reviewed it, and listing a charity here does not mean it recommends this handbook or any deed poll service.
