Unsettling settlement letters

My mother-in-law, who lives in Marlow Bottom, was recently contacted by the Government.

As you might imagine, it wasn’t Boris reaching out to ask how he could be a better Prime Minister, perish the thought.

The heading, in big bold letters was ‘EU Settlement Scheme’ and even before the ‘Dear Inger’ bit, she was told, also in large letters that she should apply to the scheme by June 30, 2021.

The letter went on, helpfully informing her that the UK has left the European Union and ‘to carry on living in the UK’ after the above date, she needed to have UK immigration status.

It was a letter that would make Daily Mail readers proud that we are ‘getting our country back’ and we can finally kick out some more scrounging foreigners.

It carried on over three pages, pausing only briefly to mention in passing that ‘if you are a British national you can ignore this letter’ – although anyone reading this letter in a sense of panic would at best be confused by the mixed messages.

The letter was signed off, ‘Yours sincerely, Office manager’ as though nobody was prepared to put their name to this alarming and highly officious missive. Anyway, a little about the recipient:

Inger arrived in the UK in 1964 as a Dane and a keen Anglophile.

She learned English from listening to Radio 4 and by reading Charles Dickens.

In 1965 she queued to pay her respects to Winston Churchill who lay in state at Westminster Hall.

Later that year she married an Englishman called Michael and the following year, one more associated with our last World Cup win, she became a British citizen.

She subsequently became a big cricket fan, which is probably rare amongst women born in Denmark in the 1940s and for her, outside of family, there are few things better than a trip to Lord’s.

The 55 ‘years of hurt’ that English football fans had experienced when the letter tumbled through her letterbox almost perfectly coincided with the half century plus five years that Inger has had British citizenship.

She received a British passport at around the time of Geoff Hurst’s celebrated hat-trick. More recently she even supported England when they played Denmark, her original homeland, in the semi-finals of Euro 2020.

There are a few questions that need to be asked about this: firstly how many copies of this letter were sent and why were no checks made as to individuals’ right to remain – before they were put in a big red post box?

Why is it deemed acceptable to wrongly send this kind of anxiety-inducing communication to anyone – particularly in these times of supposedly greater mental health awareness?

Surely if you are going to send a letter to someone telling them to apply to stay in your country, it would be common courtesy to make sure they actually need to apply.

As a consequence the government paid (i.e. printing costs, postage) money they apparently can’t afford (they have recently cut the aid budget which helped the poorest folk in the world), to unnecessarily cause some people stress.

What sort of a lazy system was used that caused these letters to be sent, without any check about the citizenship status of the recipient?

And finally and perhaps most pertinently, has nothing been learned from the Windrush scandal?

The government emerged from that whole nasty episode (and our own MP, Theresa May, culpable as Home Secretary at the time) with little credit.

You would think they would tread a little more carefully the next time round.

I wonder if any other readers received a version of this letter and how it made them feel? Or perhaps others have views about this episode?

Surely at least our letter’s page resident Brexit correspondent may have a few thoughts. fenced, is unlikely to have a significant impact.

It is certainly not of sufficient impact to justify preventing all access to the causeway path by walkers, as has recently been proposed by a petition from Wild Cookham.

The film used to promote this uses unrepresentative information. For example, the dominant wildfowl, the Canada goose, whose faeces encourage blanket weed, is not mentioned, nor is the American mink, known to occur in the area and a predator on water voles.

It would be interesting to know how much was filmed at Battlemead.

The next meeting of the steering group for Battlemead Common meets on August 3 when the future plans for the common will be revealed.

Readers should know that the amenity societies have done their best to obtain improved access to this new common by contacting the steering group.

Walking has been especially important for mental and physical health during the pandemic. We feel Battlemead should play its part.

So ignore the scaremongering and use an opportunity to experience the landscape and views from the East Field.

On October 3, the annual Boundary Walk will take place.

This will allow you to walk the causeway path to reach the Thames on the missing link in the Boundary Walk/Millennium Walk and judge for yourself what it offers.

ANN DARRACOTT Maidenhead Civic Society

STEVE GILLIONS East Berks Ramblers

DICK SCARFF The Cookham Society