All Articles

The Court of Appeal has given some guidance on the application of the exceptional assurance policy put in place during the pandemic and has concluded that it could not be relied on by the appellant, notwithstanding the fact that the Home Office had issued him with a letter granting a...

4th April 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

A Somali man who is at risk of harm from the Islamist Al-Shabaab group in his home area is not a refugee or entitled to humanitarian protection because he can reasonably relocate to Mogadishu. This is the decision of the Court of Appeal in ASJ (Somalia) v Secretary of State...

3rd April 2025
BY Keelin McCarthy

A visit visa allows a person to visit the United Kingdom on a temporary basis, usually for up to six months at a time. As is typical of many sections of the immigration rules, the rules for visitors are complex and spread across several appendices. The rules are also updated...

2nd April 2025
BY colinyeo

The Electronic Travel Authorisation scheme was first announced in the March 2023 Statement of Changes to the immigration rules HC 1160. This post explains what the scheme is, who needs an electronic travel authorisation, and how to apply. The relevant immigration rules are found in Appendix Electronic Travel Authorisation and Appendix ETA...

2nd April 2025
BY Rachel Whickman

Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! A survey of Ukrainians in the UK has indicated that a high proportion had lost either lost out on a new job, their tenancy was not renewed, were unable to sign a new tenancy or had a job contract that was not renewed,...

1st April 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The High Court has held that a Brazilian tourist had her visitor visa unlawfully cancelled and that she was unlawfully detained for eight weeks, from 12 September to 8 November 2024. The case is R (Thadeu) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWHC 736 (Admin). The claimant...

1st April 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Court of Appeal has heavily criticised a First-tier Tribunal decision which allowed an appeal based on family life, without properly taking into account that the appellant had been in the UK unlawfully. The case is Arshad v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 355. The...

1st April 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal against a decision by the Upper Tribunal that the First-tier Tribunal did not have jurisdiction to consider an appeal based on a grant of humanitarian protection that had not been made by the Home Secretary, on the grounds of a nationality that...

1st April 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Court of Appeal has said that Lane J was “plainly correct” in his finding that a pending application to the Supreme Court does not act as an barrier to deportation on the basis that the appeal has not yet been finally determined. The case is R (Geddes) v Secretary...

31st March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

In R(AH) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, the Home Office has conceded that it wrongly excluded a Dutch man from re-entering the UK after a family holiday because it mistook him for a different Dutch national who had been deported from the UK. After proceedings were issued...

31st March 2025
BY Alex Schymyck

The Court of Appeal has held that the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) was entitled to decide that it would not be unjust to refuse to allow a woman in a refugee camp in Syria to lodge a late appeal against the Home Office’s decision depriving her of her British...

28th March 2025
BY Iain Halliday

Immigration Advisor IAA (Level 1 to 3) or Practising Solicitor with IAAS accreditation About us: The Refugee and Migrant Forum of Essex and London (RAMFEL), is a not-for-profit organisation and one of the largest immigration and asylum advice charities in the UK, supporting refugees, asylum seekers and vulnerable migrants to...

28th March 2025
BY Free Movement

A man who was detained at Heathrow for just over 17 hours has been awarded damages by the Court of Appeal. The case is R (Tazeem) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 347. The appellant arrived at Heathrow on 9 September 2022 with a student...

27th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

This week marked ten years since the Modern Slavery Act 2015 came into force. The trafficking statistics for October to December 2024 have been published, meaning we now have a full year of data for 2024. In the statistics before these, for July to September 2024, I noted that positive...

27th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration has published the report on “An inspection of the Border Force operation to deter and detect clandestine entrants“. The inspection took place between August and November 2024. In his 2018 inspection the chief inspector found that no fines had been given to...

26th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

“Although I have considerable sympathy for Mr Tomlinson, we are unable to wind back the clock so as to put right the historic injustice”. This quote perfectly summarises the bittersweet victory for the appellant in the recent Court of Appeal case of R (Tomlinson) v Secretary of State for the...

26th March 2025
BY Francesca Sella

Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! On Tuesday last week the Home Affairs Select Committee heard oral evidence for their inquiry into asylum accommodation from witnesses including David Bolt, the interim Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (for a little while longer at least). The written evidence submitted to the inquiry has...

25th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

Following a consultation that took place in 2023, some important changes are being made to eVisas via the Immigration (Biometric Information etc.) (Amendment) Regulations 2025 which were made yesterday and come into force on Thursday 27 March 2025 (although not all powers will be used from then). The explanatory memorandum...

25th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

In a decision on asylum support last year, the judge invited the Home Secretary to apply for judicial review of the tribunal so that guidance could be provided to asylum support judges on jurisdiction in implicit withdrawal cases (i.e. where the Home Office has deemed an asylum claim withdrawn). The...

25th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Home Secretary has been only partially successful in the Court of Appeal in relation to Medical Justice’s challenge to the introduction of a policy allowing caseworkers to refer medical evidence for a second opinion from the Home Office’s medical staff where they believed that standards were not being met....

24th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Upper Tribunal has held that the Home Secretary has an implied power to correct inadvertent errors, following a judicial review brought by a man whose grant of leave erroneously referred to his being granted settlement instead of limited leave. The case is R (YC) v Secretary of State for...

21st March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration’s report “An inspection of the Home Office’s management of fee waiver applications (August 2024 – November 2024)” has been published, and as always there are various interesting bits such as what on earth was going on with those tokens last year and...

21st March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The government announced increases to some Home Office fees, including for electronic travel authorisation, skilled worker and naturalisation applications, earlier this year. It has now been confirmed that these and other increases, including to visitor, indefinite leave to remain and Appendix FM applications, will come into effect on 9 April...

20th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Court of Appeal confirmed in Prestwick Care Ltd & Ors, R (On the Application Of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 184 that the Home Office is not under a duty to carry out an assessment of the impact of sponsor licence revocation. The...

20th March 2025
BY Jack Freeland

The Upper Tribunal has dismissed a claim for damages for breach of article 8 ECHR following on from the Home Secretary’s failure to grant the applicant discretionary leave as a victim of trafficking. The case is R (on the application of KM (Nigeria)) v Secretary of State for the Home...

19th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

Three individual claimants have succeeded in a judicial review claiming that they had been unlawfully accommodated at the former RAF base in Wethersfield. The court also held that the Home Office had unlawfully breached the Public Sector Equality Duty. The case is TG & Ors v Secretary of State for...

19th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! Committee stage of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill continued last week, and the two amendments that had been put forward to reverse the recent changes to the good character guidance were debated on Thursday. Pete Wishart MP put it well when...

18th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Home Secretary has succeeded in an appeal where she argued that those with deportation orders or proceedings were lawfully excluded from a concession allowing certain victims of trafficking to be considered for discretionary leave under the more favourable provisions in place before 30 January 2023. The case is Secretary...

18th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

Job title: Senior Legal Education Officer Location: Right to Remain Office, Bethnal Green, London. Salary: £46,000 – 48,000 (inclusive of London weighting) per annum FTE, pro-rated, depending on the skills and experience. Hours: Full time or 0.8 FTE (28 hours per week) Contract: Permanent, 6 month probationary period Reporting to:...

18th March 2025
BY Free Movement

The Upper Tribunal has dismissed a challenge to a refusal of further leave under Appendix Representative of an Overseas Business on the grounds that overseas ownership of the UK based subsidiary is required from incorporation and not just at the point of application, and that the Home Secretary was entitled...

17th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

Ahead of the government’s (apparently fairly imminent now) Immigration White Paper, the National Audit Office has published a report looking at how the Home Office manages the Skilled Worker route. In particular, they looked at whether the Home Office has an effective approach to adjusting the entry requirements to respond...

17th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

Despite the expansion of the Legal Services Act in 2022 to allow for pro bono costs to be awarded in tribunals, many legal professionals remain unaware of the scheme. Pro bono costs orders are an untapped resource within the legal profession, with unfulfilled potential to help close the funding gap...

17th March 2025
BY Mary Ward

Under the EU Settlement Scheme, an EU/EEA/Swiss citizen or their family members, or in some cases former family members, are either granted pre-settled status for five years (as limited leave) or settled status as permanent residence (as indefinite leave). In this article we’ll refer to EU/EEA/Swiss citizens as EU citizens....

14th March 2025
BY Chris Benn

Hot on the heels of the latest immigration and asylum statistics, we now have the tribunals’ figures for October to December 2024 and can see that the First-tier Tribunal’s asylum appeal backlog has increased from 34,234 outstanding cases at the end of September 2024 to 41,987 cases by the end...

13th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

A claimant seeking compensation under the Windrush Compensation Scheme after being denied entry to the UK and removed from the UK in July 1999 will have his application reconsidered after the High Court quashed the Home Office’s refusal. The case is R (Lee) v Secretary of State for the Home...

13th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The latest statement of changes to the immigration rules has been published, accompanied by an explanatory memorandum and a ministerial statement. A visa regime has been imposed on Trinidad and Tobago with immediate effect, I am pretty sure you can guess why. Details on that and many of the other...

12th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan
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