All Articles: Procedure

Immigration forms collection

The team at gov.uk are making definite progress with improving the immigration bits of the website. This latest collection of all the major immigration forms

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The issue of when the Upper Tribunal might make a mandatory order requiring the Home Office to act in a specific way was considered in the case of R (on the application of Sultana) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (mandatory order – basic principles) IJR [2015] UKUT...

20th May 2015
BY Colin Yeo

In the case of R (on the application of SN) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (striking out – principles) IJR [2015] UKUT 227(IAC) the President of the Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber not only strikes out the applicant’s judicial review claim but also goes on to...

14th May 2015
BY Colin Yeo

Rights of appeal under the Immigration Act 2014 are only available in refugee cases and if ‘the Secretary of State has decided to refuse a human rights claim made by [the person]’ (amended section 82 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002). This will clearly require a human rights...

29th April 2015
BY Colin Yeo

The word “hopeless” appears five times in the determination of R (on the application of Rashid) v Secretary of State for the Home Department IJR [2015] UKUT 190 (IAC). While the judge remains fairly cool she was clearly irritated with Counsel. Much of the case is devoted to salvaging some...

23rd April 2015
BY Colin Yeo

In a useful case the Upper Tribunal addresses one of the “mind the gap” differences between the Immigration Rules and the requirements of human rights law. There is a growing body of case law that recognises that the two bodies of law are not, contrary to the Home Office position,...

22nd April 2015
BY Colin Yeo

The major changes to rights of appeal and removal powers wrought by the Immigration Act 2014 took full effect on 6 April 2015, although with some transitional provisions for existing cases. This blog post, based on the second edition of my Immigration Act 2014 ebook, examines and attempts to explain...

17th April 2015
BY Colin Yeo

A new “health surcharge” was introduced for all new applications for entry clearance or leave to remain made on or after 6 April 2015. The charge is £150 per year for students and £200 per year for all other types of application. A charge is payable for each dependent as...

15th April 2015
BY Colin Yeo

The full list of fees for immigration applications from inside and outside the UK applying from 6 April 2015 has been published. There are some hefty and puzzling increases: a 50% hike to £162 for visiting academics for some reason, a 57% increase to £592 for relatives of refugees, a...

24th March 2015
BY Colin Yeo

Normally, where an application for judicial review is made the first stage is for a judge to consider the grounds for judicial review and the acknowledgement of service and summary grounds of defence, then decide without holding a hearing whether permission should be granted. Lawyers commonly refer to this decision...

19th March 2015
BY Colin Yeo

Full appeal rights for applications under the Points Based System are being ended with effect from today, 2 March 2015, and for all other cases from 6 April 2015. The initial change applies to those who make an application on or after 2 March 2015 under Tiers 1, 2 or...

2nd March 2015
BY Colin Yeo

This piece started life as a practice note for welfare benefits cases but the same principles are transferrable to the immigration jurisdiction so we thought it would be helpful to share it here on Free Movement as well. If permission to appeal against a decision of a First-tier Tribunal in...

16th February 2015
BY Desmond Rutledge

The Presidents of the Immigration and Asylum Chambers sat together in the First-tier Tribunal case of Cancino (costs – First-tier Tribunal – new powers) [2015] UKFTT 00059 (IAC) in order to give guidance on when legal costs might become payable in immigration cases. The power to make awards of legal...

13th February 2015
BY Colin Yeo

Where something goes badly wrong at a hearing it is sometimes necessary for the advocate who was present to explain events as part of the appeal process. It has become customary in immigration proceedings for the advocate to have to write a witness statement and therefore, because he or she...

28th January 2015
BY Colin Yeo

President Mr Justice McCloskey has criticised the Home Office for submitting “wing and a prayer” grounds of appeal to the Upper Tribunal and the judge who granted permission to appeal. The case is MR (permission to appeal: Tribunal’s approach) Brazil [2015] UKUT 00029 (IAC) and the language is forthright: To...

27th January 2015
BY Colin Yeo

In a curious turn of events, the Home Office wrote to the Tribunal Procedure Committee late last year to ‘fess up to having mislead the committee about Home Office policy on withdrawal of decisions. This is an issue we’ve covered before on Free Movement because under the old procedure rules...

20th January 2015
BY Colin Yeo

The previously reported case of R (on the application of Bilal Mahmood) v Secretary of State for the home Department (candour/reassessment duties; ETS :alternative remedy) IJR [2014] UKUT 439 (IAC) has been re-titled and I think the headnote has been supplemented as well. The case is important on the ongoing...

7th January 2015
BY Colin Yeo

In an important and wide-ranging judgment the Court of Appeal in R (on the application of Gudanaviciene & Ors) v The Director of Legal Aid Casework & Ors [2014] EWCA Civ 1622 has upheld Collins J’s finding that the Exceptional Case Funding (‘ECF’) scheme has been operated unlawfully, while allowing...

22nd December 2014
BY James Packer

I’ve now come across two cases in which judges of the First-tier Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber have imposed unwanted anonymity orders on parties without any application or notice. One case is reported here and the other can’t be reported because of, well, the anonymity order. In both cases there...

17th December 2014
BY Colin Yeo

The case of R (on the application of Muwonge) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (consent orders: costs: guidance) (IJR) [2014] UKUT 514 (IAC) makes for interesting law and interesting reading. It is, apart from anything, the first case I can immediately recall featuring a Prologue, a section...

21st November 2014
BY Colin Yeo

The First-tier Tribunal now has a new set of procedure rules: the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Rules 2014, which came into force on 20 October 2014. The Rules are streamlined in some parts and the overriding objective is modified to emphasise fairness and justice more than...

20th November 2014
BY Natalie Wilkins

East of England Ambulance Service Nhs Trust v Sanders (Practice and Procedure) [2014] UKEAT 0217/14/1710 is an interesting employment case involving a litigant in person via Neil Rose. I do not think it is at all unusual for immigration tribunal judges to conduct their own research and I’ve been presented...

20th November 2014
BY Colin Yeo

When reviewing the Home Office’s new Appeals Guidance policy document I was reminded of a new feature of the appeals regime that is an important one but which was tucked away in the schedules to the Immigration Act 2014. A new expanded section 120 of the 2002 Act is introduced...

29th October 2014
BY Colin Yeo

Even aside from the issue of an unpublished law purporting to have any effect, the Immigration Act 2014 (Commencement No. 3, Transitional and Saving Provisions) Order 2014 (SI 2014/2711) is a dog’s breakfast. At first blush it appears to bring into effect the new unified removal power at section 1...

20th October 2014
BY Colin Yeo

For the first time, it will now be possible for the immigration tribunal to make awards of costs in statutory appeals. The power is conferred by the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Rules 2014 (SI 2014/2604), specifically by rule 9. The new rules come into effect on...

17th October 2014
BY Colin Yeo

Sweeping changes to appeal rights, a new non independent “administrative review” procedure and further changes to deportation appeal rights are taking effect on 20 October 2014, at least in some cases. This post will be updated as and when more concrete information becomes available because all we have at the...

16th October 2014
BY Colin Yeo

As predicted, the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Rules 2014 are official and come into effect on 20 October 2014. More analysis to follow in due course for Free Movement Members. Headline changes seem to me to be that: Costs can be awarded in the First-tier Tribunal...

30th September 2014
BY Colin Yeo

In a fresh batch of cases from the reporting committee, two of those cases address the question of how grounds should be drafted, what constitutes an error of law and when permission should be granted. One of the cases concerns an appeal by a claimant and the other an appeal...

11th September 2014
BY Colin Yeo

Given my experience on the float list at Hatton Cross this week, this successful complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman makes very interesting reading. An award of £3,600 plus interest for legal costs and £100 for inconvenience was made to a lady whose hearing was cancelled the day before...

22nd August 2014
BY Colin Yeo

The most devastating aspect of the Immigration Act 2014 (“2014 Act”) is the brutal scything of appeal rights. The Government has triumphantly declared that it has reduced the number of appeal rights from 17 (the number of immigration decisions in s.82 NIAA 2002 as it stands, plus s.83 & 83A...

19th August 2014
BY Sadat Sayeed

At paragraph 4(b) of the newly laid Tribunal Procedure (Amendment No. 3) Rules 2014 is a reference to the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Rules 2014. These latter rules do not exist yet. As paragraph 4(b) of the amendment rules commences on 20 October 2014, can we...

11th August 2014
BY Colin Yeo

Large scale recruitment of deputies for the Upper Tribunal immigration chamber can surely only mean that a LOT more work is expected there in the near future?

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7th August 2014
BY Colin Yeo

A fascinating study of power play and relationships inside and outside the hearing room has been published as a working paper by the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford: The culture of disbelief: an ethnographic approach to understanding an under-theorised concept in the UK asylum system by Jessica...

6th August 2014
BY Colin Yeo

The refusal rate for family visit visa applications jumped by 6 percentage points in the period after abolition of appeal rights in July 2013.

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31st July 2014
BY Colin Yeo

In Detention Action v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2014] EWHC 2245, Ouseley J considered a challenge to the lawfulness of the policy and practice applied by the Secretary of State in the operation of the detained fast track and concluded that it ‘carries with it too high...

15th July 2014
BY Bijan Hoshi

The Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008 are to be amended from 30 June 2014 to ensure that one party to proceedings gets notice before the other and indeed is responsible for serving the other party. Because the proceedings are immigration ones involving asylum seekers, the obvious bias in treatment...

11th June 2014
BY Colin Yeo

There can be few immigration practitioners who do not presently encounter decisions in relation to applications made on the basis of peoples’ private and family life which do not carry the right of appeal. In recent years the prevailing tendency has become to segregate decisions, where the applicant is an...

2nd June 2014
BY Mark Symes

The Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2014 came into force on 22 April 2014 with the effect that judicial review proceedings commenced on or after that day will not be funded unless: (a) the High Court or Upper Tribunal grants permission; or, (b) permission is neither granted...

19th May 2014
BY Bijan Hoshi

The team at gov.uk are making definite progress with improving the immigration bits of the website. This latest collection of all the major immigration forms is very handy.

...
2nd May 2014
BY Colin Yeo

This jumped out at me from the newspaper the other day: People who may find it difficult to give their best possible evidence in a courtroom environment and all child victims will be considered in the pilot areas. This allows them to give evidence and be cross-examined by both prosecution...

29th April 2014
BY Colin Yeo

Ved and another (appealable decisions; permission applications; Basnet) [2014] UKUT 150 (IAC) is a new case from the Upper Tribunal on the vexed issue of immigration applications the Home Office considers to be invalid. The tribunal takes the view that a Home Office decision that an application is invalid cannot...

28th April 2014
BY Colin Yeo
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