Delay challenge succeeds after Home Office wrongfully voided further submissions

The Upper Tribunal has made a declaration that the Home Office’s delay in considering further submissions was unlawful, after the Home Office “voided” the further submissions without telling the applicant. The case is R (D1527) v Secretary of State for the Home Department JR-2025-LON-001018.

The applicant is an Egyptian national who arrived in the UK in January 2014 and claimed asylum. The claim was refused in November 2014 and his appeal was unsuccessful. In June 2016 he was convicted of sexual assault and given a suspended sentence of 16 weeks’ imprisonment, suspended for 12 months. He made further submissions on 9 February 2018 based on the risk of persecution in Egypt because of his sexual orientation and because he had not done military service.

Following a judicial review, in June 2019 the applicant was granted 12 months’ discretionary leave to remain while litigation and investigations concerning the abuses that took place in Brook House (which the applicant had been subject to) were ongoing. In July 2021 the Home Office voided the applicant’s further submissions, without telling him.

On 3 October 2023 the applicant was granted two and a half years’ discretionary leave to remain. On 28 November 2024 the Home Office told the applicant that the further submissions had been voided.

The claim was reinstated on 19 December 2024 and the Home Office said that a decision would be made in three months “absent special circumstances”. The applicant sent updated objective evidence on 10 January 2025 and the case was allocated to a Home Office decision maker on 24 February 2025.

The judicial review application was lodged on 3 April 2025 and expedition was ordered with a rolled up hearing listed for 29 April 2025. There were two grounds for judicial review, that the delay was unlawful and that the failure to comply with the three month timeframe was a breach of legitimate expectation.

The Upper Tribunal set out the general principles in delay challenges as:

(a) There is a general duty to make a decision on an asylum application or further submissions within a “reasonable period of time”;

(b) Unlawful delay may result from irrational decisions/acts or inactions;

(c) Delay may be unlawful where the period of time in question is “manifestly unreasonable”;

(d) Delay may be unlawful where there is a particular detriment caused to the individual;

(e) Delay challenges are only likely to succeed in very exceptional circumstances;

(f) Delay challenges such as the present are context-specific.

The legitimate expectation ground failed because of the lack of a “clear and unambiguous promise”. However, the Upper Tribunal held that there had been an unlawful delay from the period where the further submissions were wrongly voided onwards. The tribunal ordered that the decision be made and served no later than 1 May 2025 which was the timeframe indicated by the witness for the Home Office. 

Although the claim was successful, it is worth noting that the tribunal dismissed arguments relating to detriment and that the delay was manifestly unreasonable, so delay claims remain far from straightforward.