In the latest and last judgment in some fairly complex litigation around the use of hotels to accommodation and other issues, the High Court seems to have finally got to a point with Kent County Council where they accept that they cannot get around the duty to find a placement...
The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal alleging procedural unfairness in a First-tier Tribunal hearing where the judge asked a “significant” number of questions. The court also gave a brief reminder of the importance of counsel raising any issues with judicial conduct during the appeal itself. The case is...
Shortly after it received Royal Assent last year, the Illegal Migration Act 2023 was described as “utterly unworkable and extortionately expensive”, “deeply unethical” and “a traffickers’ charter”. Despite those comments by the shadow Immigration Minister, Labour has not committed to repealing the Illegal Migration Act. However I am hopefully not...
The mantra of “safe and legal routes” is regularly repeated by the government when justifying increasingly draconian legislation in an attempt to prevent refugees from travelling to the UK under their own steam. The argument is that refugees should use these safe and legal routes instead of arriving in small...
The High Court has held that the decision to refuse to grant exceptional case funding for legal aid to a person applying to the Windrush compensation scheme was lawful. The case is R (Oji) v The Director of Legal Aid Casework [2024] EWHC 1281 (Admin). Background to the compensation scheme...
Immigration law is constantly changing and the Home Office updates its guidance documents accordingly. Sometimes you will need to look at an older version of the guidance that applied at a certain time but it is no longer on GOV.UK as it has been replaced with the new version. When...
The Home Office has published statistics for the period January to March 2024 showing a marked drop in the grant rate for asylum cases, tens of thousands of EU Settlement Scheme applications rejected as invalid, and a fee waiver backlog that seems to be rapidly spiralling out of control. My...
A man who had lived in the UK for over 20 years and was married to a British national before the relationship broke down has been unsuccessful in his challenge to an entry clearance refusal on the grounds that he had not received the notice of curtailment. The case is...
The High Court has determined that the Home Secretary’s use of electronic monitoring was unlawful in respect of four claimants and the principles applied in the case will have a wider impact. The court also found that the Home Secretary can lawfully use data collected through electronic monitoring to decide...
The Upper Tribunal has found the guidance to be used those who cannot travel to enrol their biometrics because it is unsafe to be unlawful. The individual refusal decisions were also quashed. The linked cases are RM and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department JR-2024-LON-000082 and WM...
