First residency requirements, then ESOL? How national decisions can protect refugees and migrants from hostile local ones.

Scrapping the residency requirement is a welcome step, but as Bell Foundation chief executive Diana Sutton pointed out in a recent FE Week column, it doesn’t touch the substance of the Lincolnshire decision itself. ESOL provision in the region is still due to be defunded from next year, and the alternatives on offer — functional skills English and GCSE resits — are designed for first-language speakers and unsuitable for many ESOL learners. Sutton’s wider argument is that the Lincolnshire case exposes a structural problem: devolution, without guardrails, creates a postcode lottery in which a learner’s access to English tuition depends entirely on where they happen to live.

Her call is for the government’s ongoing national review of ESOL provision to deliver a proper framework — clear principles, minimum expectations and accountability — rather than leaving provision to the discretion of individual mayors. With adult ESOL enrolment up by nearly two-thirds over the past five years, even as real-terms funding has fallen by a quarter since 2010–11, the stakes of getting this right are considerable.

If the three-year residency requirement can be scrapped, then surely this strengthens the case for a national ESOL framework with guaranteed provision for those who need it to integrate into new communities and enter the workforce. For providers and practitioners working across devolved areas, Lincolnshire is worth watching closely — not necessarily as a one-off, but as a test case for how far local discretion over ESOL funding can go, and what national government is prepared to do about it.