Author Archive
Youth Mobility visa: what is it and how does it work?
A Youth Mobility visa enables people aged 18-30 to live and work in the UK, usually for up to two years. It used to be called the “working holiday-maker scheme” and some people may still call it that. Crucially, there is no requirement to ...
12th May 2023Upper Tribunal awards significant damages for unlawful Dublin refusal
In a helpful judgment, the Upper Tribunal has awarded £10,500 to a child who was unlawfully prevented from entering the UK from Greece to be re-united with his cousin who had been recognised as a refugee and had lived in the UK for many years. R(MA) ...
25th April 2023High Court rejects challenge by Afghan families to hotel move
The High Court has rejected a challenge to the Secretary of State’s decision to move a group of Afghan families rescued from the Taliban in 2021 from one temporary hotel to another temporary hotel. R(HZ) v Secretary of State for the Home Departm ...
4th April 2023No damages for unlawful no recourse to public funds policy
The High Court has determined that there are no damages available for people who were subject to the no recourse to public funds (NRPF) policy in the case of Home Office v ASY [2023] EWHC 196 (KB). The policy was declared to be unlawful in R (W, a ch ...
10th February 2023High Court orders Home Secretary to immediately increase asylum support rates
In a powerful judgment given on 21 December 2022, the High Court ordered the Secretary of State for the Home Department to immediately increase the weekly support payments made to asylum seekers to £45. This is the largest ever single increase in the ...
9th January 2023Upper Tribunal issues Country Guidance on El Salvador gang risk
The Upper Tribunal has issued country guidance about the risk from gangs in El Salvador. In EMAP (Gang violence – Convention Reason) El Salvador CG [2022] UKUT 00335 (IAC), the Upper Tribunal makes helpful findings about the general context in which ...
20th December 2022False imprisonment claimant punished for failing to negotiate
The High Court has provided a warning to practitioners about the importance of pursuing negotiations in false imprisonment claims. The case of Moradi v The Home Office [2022] EWHC 3125 (KB) also concerns the timings of those negotiations. The judge to ...
9th December 2022Successful challenge in the High Court helps family of Afghan judge
The High Court has quashed a decision to refuse entry to the children of an Afghan judge who was relocated to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy. The case of R (BAL) v Secretary of State for Defence [2022] EWHC 2757 (Admin) is a ...
4th November 2022Appeal on costs, only if the judge below is obviously wrong
In R (MH) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWCA Civ 1296, the Court of Appeal has given guidance on how it will consider appeals brought solely to protect a party’s position regarding costs. The issue arose in the context of a Dub ...
25th October 2022Home Office concedes in Supreme Court EU law deportation appeal
In an unusual development, the Secretary of State for the Home Department has conceded that the Court of Appeal erred in Hussein v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 156. The mistake was in the consideration of the impact of i ...
6th October 2022Major European judgment on age assessment process
The European Court of Human Rights has handed down a significant judgment concerning the age-assessment process and rights of child asylum seekers. In Darboe and Camara v Italy (Application no. 5797/17), the court found that the Italian government had ...
30th September 2022Afghan interpreter successfully challenges entry clearance refusal
The High Court has quashed a decision to refuse entry clearance under the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (“ARAP”) on national security grounds. Unfortunately, like all national security cases it is difficult to work out exactly wh ...
27th September 2022£17,500 awarded for 40 days of unlawful detention during the pandemic
In R (Abulbakr) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWHC 1183 (Admin), the High Court has ordered the Home Office to pay a detainee £17,500 for 40 days of unlawful detention caused by unreasonable delay in providing a release address. ...
12th July 2022Challenge to “deport first, appeal later” process rejected
The Upper Tribunal has rejected a challenge to the Article 8 compliance of the “deport first, appeal later” system despite previously having ordered the Home Office to bring the claimant back to the UK to ensure he had an effective appeal. ...
28th June 2022Home Office has no power to vary High Court bail conditions
In R (BVN) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWHC 1159 (Admin) the High Court has confirmed that the Secretary of State has no power to interfere with the conditions attached to a grant of High Court bail. It is an unusual issue and ...
23rd May 2022Human rights damages claims can be transferred from Upper Tribunal to County Court
The Upper Tribunal has decided that it has the power to transfer damages claims resulting from judicial review proceedings to the County Court. The tribunal held that its incidental powers mirror those enjoyed by the High Court, which routinely transf ...
10th January 2022Court of Appeal tells SIAC to pay more respect to Home Office on national security
Secretary of State for the Home Department v P3 [2021] EWCA Civ 1642 is about how much SIAC should defer to the Home Secretary’s view about national security concerns. The answer is quite a lot, but not too much. The background to this case is t ...
26th November 2021Give trafficked asylum seekers permission to stay, says High Court
The decision in R (KTT) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC 2722 (Admin), widely reported in the mainstream press this week, is a massive result for trafficking victims. The High Court has concluded that a trafficking victim who i ...
15th October 2021Asylum seeker right to work policy declared unlawful, again
There has been another successful challenge to the policy on asylum seekers undertaking paid work. In R (Cardona) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC 2656 (Admin), the High Court has declared that Home Office policy on this issue ...
6th October 2021No blanket relief for appellants denied hearing under unlawful pandemic guidance
At the outset of the pandemic, on 23 March 2021, Upper Tribunal President Lane issued guidance for making deciding immigration appeals “on the papers”, without an oral hearing. As all immigration practitioners know, oral hearings are essen ...
27th September 2021Confirmed: dependency for extended family members must be unbroken
In Chowdhury v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 1220, the Court of Appeal has confirmed that where an extended family member applies for an EEA residency card, their period of dependency on their EEA citizen sponsor must have ...
17th August 2021Court of Appeal lays down hyper-strict approach to EU asylum claims
ZV (Lithuania) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 1196 is an important case about the admissibility of asylum claims made by EU citizens. There is a long-standing rule that asylum claims by EU nationals will only be considere ...
11th August 2021Supreme Court upholds Home Office age assessment policy
The Supreme Court has upheld the policy of treating asylum seekers who claim to be children as adults if two Home Office officials think that the person looks significantly over 18. The case is R (BF (Eritrea)) v Secretary of State for the Home Depar ...
2nd August 2021Upper Tribunal rebuked for failing to understand its job (again)
The Court of Appeal has rebuked the Upper Tribunal for reversing an immigration judge’s decision without identifying an error of law. The Upper Tribunal’s jurisdiction to allow an appeal from the First-tier Tribunal depends on having first ide ...
24th June 2021Home Office accidentally discriminates against trafficking victims with kids
The High Court has declared that an anomaly in the benefits system which disadvantages victims of trafficking who receive asylum support is discriminatory and in breach of Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Unusually, the Secretary ...
2nd June 2021Trafficking authorities not experts on trafficking says criminal Court of Appeal
The Court of Appeal’s Criminal Division has concluded that Home Office trafficking decisions are not admissible in criminal proceedings. Brecani v R [2021] EWCA Crim 731 concerned a 17-year-old convicted of taking part in a conspiracy to supply ...
1st June 2021Criminality undermines strong private life case in deportation appeal
In KM v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 693, the Court of Appeal concluded that someone with an otherwise “strong” case for remaining in the UK based on their private life might not have a “particularly str ...
20th May 2021Lack of Rule 35 process in prisons is unlawful, Court of Appeal finds
The judgment of the Court of Appeal in MR (Pakistan) v Secretary of State for Justice & Others [2021] EWCA Civ 541 marks a major step forward in the battle over the use of immigration detention in prisons. The court has decided that the absence of ...
19th April 2021Human trafficking to be covered by the Adults at Risk policy
The Home Secretary has laid a new draft of the Adults at Risk statutory guidance before Parliament. The new version marks a significant change in how trafficking victims fit within the policy framework for detaining vulnerable people. At present, the ...
6th April 2021Human rights court criticises CPS for prosecuting trafficking victims
The European Court of Human Rights has looked for the first time at when the prosecution of a human trafficking victim might violate Article 4 of the Convention. In VCL and AN v United Kingdom (application nos. 77587/12 and 74603/12), it sharply criti ...
16th February 2021Unusual costs decision against the Home Office
In R (Mozumder) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 138, the Court of Appeal has dealt with an unusual costs issue arising from the furore over alleged cheating in English language tests. The issue was how costs should be ap ...
12th February 2021Home Office given 48 hours to release immigration detainee despite coronavirus
In an interim relief decision the High Court has ordered the release of an immigration detainee within 48 hours, indicating that judges will not allow the Home Office to use the pandemic as cover to justify long “grace period” delays in re ...
10th February 2021Upper Tribunal has no jurisdiction to correct appeal deadline error
Ndwanyi (Permission to appeal; challenging decision on timeliness) Rwanda [2020] UKUT 378 (IAC) is about how a respondent can challenge a decision that an application for permission to appeal is in time, when in fact it is not in time. In this case th ...
29th January 2021Deportation appeal not a “dress rehearsal” says Court of Appeal
Lowe v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 62 is about the role of the Upper Tribunal in deportation appeals. The role of an appellate court when reviewing the findings of fact made by the court below sounds straightforward: it ...
27th January 2021Minor offence can trigger deportation, human rights court confirms
The European Court of Human Rights has confirmed that the final offence committed by someone before deportation action is taken against them does not need to be particularly significant if they have a history of serious offending. In Munir Johanna v D ...
21st January 2021High Court bail for vulnerable detainee
The High Court has ordered the release on bail of a detainee who is subject to deportation action but suffers from serious mental health problems. Full judgments at the interim relief stage are relatively unusual so R (RS) v Secretary of State for the ...
20th January 2021Criminal Court of Appeal ignores immigration judge’s trafficking determination
In BTT v R [2021] EWCA Crim 4 the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) required a man appealing a conviction for growing cannabis to give oral evidence about his account of human trafficking. It then relied on this evidence to depart from the Upper Tri ...
18th January 2021Tribunal defines “historic injustice”
Lawyers are prone to creating “terms of art”, i.e. a phrase which has a specific meaning within a particular branch of law, distinct from its usage in ordinary English. In Patel (historic injustice; NIAA Part 5A) India [2020] UKUT 351 (IAC ...
12th January 2021Expert report finds room for improvement in UK’s statelessness system
The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, has today released a new report auditing the Home Office’s procedure for deciding statelessness applications. The audit finds that there is considerable room for improvement in how the UK processes applicati ...
16th December 2020High Court finally calls time on asylum accommodation delays
Everyone who works with asylum seekers knows that the Home Office system for providing accommodation is not fit for purpose. In R (DMA and Others) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWHC 3416 (Admin) the High Court has finally and emp ...
15th December 2020