This chapter concerns eligibility for the range of benefits and resources considered in this part (i.e. HB, homelessness and an allocation of housing, Chapter 9, Chapter 6, and Chapter 7 respectively). Eligibility is in some respects the gateway into the assessment obligations of local housing authorities, but extends beyond this to other services, such as those provided through the support available to asylum seekers. It is a relatively new arena, which is generally aimed at asylum seekers and other persons from abroad, and one which has been highly contested. The ‘time when the welfare state did not look at your passport or ask why you were here’ has passed (R (Westminster CC) v. National Asylum Support Service [2002] 1 WLR 2956, at [19] per Lord Hoffmann).

As Morris (2009: 32) has put it, in the context of citizenship (or rather non-citizens), the law works through a process of ‘civic stratification … which operates through a series of differentiated legal statuses with different rights attached’. The law – by which is meant not just the legislative settlement, but also the complex of secondary legislation, tertiary guidance and circulars, and judicial authority – is particularly complex and sometimes difficult to find.