About Praxis#
Praxis Community Projects began in 1983 in Bethnal Green, where its building on Pott Street is still its home, and calls itself a human rights charity fighting for migrant rights. It is one of the largest providers of free immigration advice in London, helping about 2,500 people a year with immigration and welfare questions, often through partnerships with hospitals, councils and homelessness charities. It campaigns on the ten-year route to settlement and on no recourse to public funds, and gave early evidence of what became the Windrush scandal. It also runs a paid interpreting service in over twenty languages and user-led groups for mothers and young people.
Who it can advise, and how#
The get help page is specific about scope. Its advice focuses on applications made on human rights grounds, for people in London on a very low income or who are destitute. It cannot help with asylum claims, entry clearance, naturalisation, or student and skilled worker visas.
- Phone advice runs on Wednesday afternoons, except on drop-in weeks, and the line is busy.
- A monthly drop-in is for people who live in Tower Hamlets or have no fixed address: doors open at 9am and there are twelve immigration appointments, first come, first served.
- Email is for groups, interpreting and training only; its admin address cannot take referrals or give immigration advice.
For self-help, Praxis publishes A Migrant's Guide, written with people with lived experience, as a free web app and as PDFs in Amharic, Arabic, Bengali, Farsi, Pashto and Spanish.
What it says about eVisas and names#
Praxis was among the first charities to warn about the switch to eVisas. Its 2024 briefing records someone whose online status showed her photo with another person's name and date of birth, and says corrections often took weeks. It also notes that not everyone has the identity documents needed to set up a UKVI account.
Its October 2024 training for homelessness workers sets out an order of steps. If the name on a new residence card was wrong, the card had to be corrected before setting up the UKVI account. A change of name, for example after marriage, was something to handle once the account was set up. Residence cards have since expired, so that detail is history, but the principle holds: fix errors first, then make changes.
Making a change once your account works#
GOV.UK's eVisa pages say an updated name needs an identity document showing it, and rule the change out while a visa decision is pending. For most people that document is a passport from their own country in the new name, so a deed poll is the first step, not the last. Only a small group escapes that requirement under the Home Office's names guidance: people it accepts as refugees or stateless, and some granted humanitarian protection, who cannot safely deal with their own embassy.
- Your eVisa and UKVI account: the steps in order.
- Changing your name if you are not a British citizen: why the Home Office wants one name across your papers.
- Can I use a UK deed poll for a passport from another country?: what India, Nigeria and Pakistan ask.
This page describes what Praxis publishes on its own website, read on 26 October 2026. Praxis has not reviewed it, and listing a charity here does not mean it recommends this handbook or any deed poll service.
