Starting out in Britain: nine guides checked against the public registers
A bank account without proof of address, a credit record from zero, a free NHS interpreter, the home rate for university, school after VAT, work and pay, and doctors and restaurants checked against the registers. All of it in one place, in the order in which the questions come up.
We have gathered in one place everything we have been checking against the public registers over recent weeks. Not summaries of other people's articles and not advice from group chats — every statement is verified against a primary source: a statute, a regulator's guidance or an official register. Below is the essential point from each guide and a link to the full text.
The order is not accidental. It follows the order in which these questions arise for someone who has recently arrived.
Your ad could be hereAdvertise here1. A bank account — everything starts here
Without an account there is no salary, no tenancy and no ordinary life. And this is where people give up earliest.
The essential point: UK law contains no requirement to prove your address. The industry guidance approved by the regulator says that standard proof of address "can be a particular difficulty for many new arrivals to the UK", and forbids staff from citing the money laundering rules "as an excuse for not opening an account".
Nine of the largest banks must open a basic account within 10 business days. The grounds for refusal are a closed list, and neither a poor credit file nor a missing address is on it. The regulations name expressly who counts as legally resident — including people with no fixed address and asylum seekers.
How to open an account, and what to do if refused →
2. Credit history, cards and sending money home
The account is open — and the phone company still wants pay-as-you-go and the agent wants six months up front. As a borrower you do not exist here: a foreign credit history does not travel.
Two things nobody writes about. First, the standard advice to register to vote is unavailable to Russian, Ukrainian, Kazakh and Moldovan citizens in England — but available in Scotland and Wales, and where it is unavailable a note added to your credit report removes a share of the automatic rejections.
Second, personal remittances to Russia are not prohibited by UK law, and an OFSI general licence permits them up to £50,000 a payment until February 2028. What closes the channel is banks' own commercial policy. "Lawful but unavailable" are two different things.
Building a credit record, and what really happens with transfers →
3. Doctors: the interpreter is free, and they must book one
The most valuable right in this collection costs nothing. NHS England guidance: interpreting "should be provided free at the point of delivery", "patients should not be asked to pay for interpreting services or to provide their own interpreter", and the practice itself is responsible for booking one.
Separately: "the use of anyone under the age of 16 for interpretation is not acceptable in any circumstance" other than immediate necessary treatment. A child should not be interpreting a conversation about their mother's illness.
And the fact that keeps people away from doctors for years: registering with a GP needs no passport, no address and no immigration status. A refusal must be explained in writing within 14 days.
How access to healthcare works, and how to check a doctor →
4. Clinics where Russian is spoken
Eight addresses, each checked against the CQC register, with named clinicians checked against the GMC and GDC. With honest notes where the claim about Russian is unsupported, and an explanation of why one clinic did not make the list.
The verified list of clinics →
5. Study: three dates and a sevenfold difference
The home rate is £9,790 a year. The international rate for the same Medicine course at Cambridge is £70,554 plus a College fee. It turns on three years of residence rather than citizenship — and you need not have held settled status for all three years, which is the part most often misread.
Three dates this year: 6 October Chevening closes, 30 November the visa maintenance figure rises, 31 December is the last day a graduate gets two years rather than eighteen months.
Who pays the home rate and what it costs everyone else →
6. Applying, and school for a child
The personal statement is no longer an essay but three questions inside 4,000 characters. The equal consideration deadline is 13 January, not the 15th that older articles print. Only two official quality measures exist; everything else is a commercial ranking, and they measure different things.
A private school after VAT: roughly £54,000 a year for boarding — with the arithmetic shown. Plus the visas for the child and for an accompanying parent, and all their restrictions.
How applications work and what school costs →
7. Food: where it is cheaper, and where it tastes like home
From the 2026/27 school year free school meals go to every family on Universal Credit — the income threshold is gone, and it is worth up to £500 a year per child. The old Household Support Fund closed on 31 March 2026, so every "ask the council about HSF" is now wrong.
How to spend less, and the money you are not claiming →
And separately, where to buy the food you grew up with: Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and Baltic shops with verified addresses.
8. Where to eat, and where to hear your own language
Sixteen venues with a food hygiene rating and the date it was awarded — which no other list of this kind carries. Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Uzbek, Lithuanian, Armenian, Azerbaijani and Moldovan cooking.
Two honest caveats sit at the top of that piece: not one venue promises on its website that Russian is spoken, and live music in Russian has all but gone after the main venue closed.
Sixteen addresses checked against the register →
9. Work: what jobs pay, and where the visa really starts
The minimum wage is law, not guidance: £12.71 an hour for everyone aged 21 and over. Median full-time pay across the country is £39,039 a year — about £2,630 a month after tax.
Two facts that remove half the anxiety: you can start work before your National Insurance number arrives, and an employer may not reject you for producing an eligible immigration document instead of a share code. The Skilled Worker visa, meanwhile, starts with a sponsoring employer, not with the visa.
Pay, tax, the visa and the red flags →
What we check, and why it differs
We do not summarise other websites. For each piece we go to the source: the text of the law on legislation.gov.uk, the regulator's guidance, the CQC, GMC, GDC, Companies House or Food Standards Agency registers. Where a primary source does not confirm something, we say "not found" rather than "does not exist".
That is why our pieces contain awkward paragraphs: that a clinic is not in the register, that a hygiene rating is four years old, that a venue does not promise what people credit it with. That is the difference between a list and a check.
If you would like new guides as they are published, there is a subscription form under this text. One field, an email when there is something to say, one-click unsubscribe.
