Too often, we all see clients who are at the mercy of the local authority housing system and who are shifted about from accommodation to accommodation with no real stability in their lives. This treatment only compounds the problems they already face following the reasons they fled their own country,...
This post is a wrap up of recent Afghan evacuation litigation in the High Court and Court of Appeal covering the cases of: A lot of the issues cross-over so rather than give you a detailed breakdown of each case, I’ll explore the Court of Appeal’s decision in S & AZ first...
A Syrian refugee who paid £440 to secure settlement appointments despite being heavily in debt has lost a High Court bid to get his money back. The case is R (MS) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWHC 1413 (Admin). Home Office policy says that applying for...
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. The figure is high for the length...
In a reasoned determination on costs, the High Court has found that a judicial review brought by seven West Midlands councils over unfair allocation of responsibilities for housing asylum seekers did not have a causal link to the eventual change in Home Office policy in this area. The case is...
The High Court has declared that Home Office policy on allowing migrants to have access to public funds is unlawful for failing to take account of the best interests of children, or of a previous judgment along similar lines. The case is R (AB & ors) v Secretary of State...
The High Court has provided a glimmer of hope for some Afghan citizens seeking urgent relocation to the UK through applications for leave outside the Immigration Rules. The case is R (S & Anor) v Secretary of State for the Home Department & Ors [2022] EWHC 1402 (Admin). The claimants...
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 the judgment contains...
When the Home Office withdraws a decision to deprive someone of their British citizenship, does the person get their citizenship back (prospective) or was it never lost in the first place (retroactive)? This was the deceptively simple question that the High Court grappled with in E3 & Ors v Secretary...
Ali v The Home Office [2022] EWHC 866 (QB) is a successful appeal against the Central London County Court’s decision to dismiss the false imprisonment claim of a recognised Afghan refugee, detained for 98 days under the Detained Fast Track process in 2015. Larry has previously covered the County Court decision, which...
The Home Office has been ordered to make a decision in principle on an Afghan judge’s visa before making him come out of hiding to lodge a formal application. The case is R (JZ) v Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs & Ors [2022] EWHC 771 (Admin)....
The High Court has held that the Home Office’s search for and seizure of mobile phones from migrants who arrived by small boats from France, and the retention of extracted data, was unlawful. The case is R (HM, MA, KH) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWHC...
In R (SB (a child)) v Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea [2022] EWHC 308 (Admin) the High Court held that an interview conducted by social workers as part of a short-form age assessment was “clearly unfair”. This was because of the combination of there having been no interpreter, no...
In R (A and Others) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWHC 360 (Admin), Mr Justice Fordham refused permission for a judicial review challenge to the consultation on the Home Office’s New Plan for Immigration. The judgment’s lengthy discussion of whether the issue was justiciable will be...
The High Court has thrown out a challenge arguing that the free legal advice given to migrants in detention centres is rubbish. Mr Justice Calver held that statistical evidence that many legal aid firms provide a poor service was unreliable and that “the system is, by and large, functioning well”....
The regulations on student finance in England list different categories of people who are eligible for student loans. One category is people who are “settled” in the UK on the first day of the first academic year of their course. To be settled in immigration terms, you generally need to...
The High Court has again taken the Home Office to task for its stingy approach to supporting vulnerable asylum seekers during the pandemic. In R (JB) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC 3417, the court held that the department unlawfully reduced cash payments to an asylum...
Two victims of the Windrush scandal have won a High Court challenge arguing for citizenship law to be applied more leniently in special cases like theirs. Mr Justice Bourne held today that a seemingly inflexible provision of British nationality law requiring that people be physically in the UK exactly five...
The High Court in R (OK) v The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust [2021] EWHC 3165 has rejected another challenge to the operation of the NHS charging regulations. This claim for judicial review was brought by OK, a Nigerian man living in England since 1990 but without immigration status...
In R (Babbage) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC 2995 (Admin), the High Court found that a person with an extensive offending and adverse immigration history who posed high risks of re-offending and absconding was unlawfully detained because of the poor prospects of enforcing his removal...
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 is also an asylum seeker must be granted...
In the case of JM v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC 2514, the High Court has held that the government failed to cater for asylum seekers’ essential living needs during the pandemic. The court found that JM, who was housed in a hotel during the COVID...
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 failed to comply with the statutory duty to...
A costs judge has backed a leading firm of solicitors in its dispute with a former client over a £194,000 bill for work on her asylum case. The judgment is Farrer & Co LLP v Yertayeva [2021] EWHC B16 (Costs). Ms Yertayeva is a Kazakhstani businesswoman, described by the judge...
In April 2021 the High Court held that Her Majesty’s Passport Office was wrong to insist on signed consent for child passports from an abusive father overseas. That judgment has now been robustly upheld by the Court of Appeal following a disastrous appeal by the Passport Office: Secretary of State...
The Home Office has been found in breach of its legal duty to protect HIV patients in its custody after officials left a Congolese man without his daily medication for several days. In what Mr Justice Bourne described as an “unedifying” spectacle, senior civil servants were unable to tell the...
The Court of Session in Scotland and the High Court in England and Wales have both ruled that newly recognised refugees have a right to claim backdated child tax credit. The cases are Adnan, Petitioners [2021] CSOH 63 and R (DK) v Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs [2021] EWHC 1845...
Hundreds of refugee children denied reunion with family in the UK may be able to challenge that decision following a ruling that Home Office policy on “Dublin III” transfers is in part unlawful. The case is R (Safe Passage International) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC...
When the Home Office want to deport an EU citizen who has committed a criminal offence it adopts a two-stage process. First it issues a Deportation Liability Notice (DLN). This lets the person know that the Home Office is considering deportation and invites representations. The second stage is issuing the...
The High Court has overturned a tribunal judgment that had instructed the Home Office to house refused asylum seekers until lockdown restrictions end. The decision in R (Secretary of State for the Home Department) v First-tier Tribunal (Social Entitlement Chamber) [2021] EWHC 1690 (Admin) is said to affect at least...
In a welcome judgment handed down yesterday, R (Akinsanya) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC 1535 (Admin), Mr Justice Mostyn found in no uncertain terms that Zambrano carers do not lose their EU law right to reside just because they have permission to remain granted under...
The High Court has condemned the treatment of asylum seekers crammed into a former military barracks in Kent. In a judgment laying bare the vile conditions at Napier barracks, Mr Justice Linden found that the site did not meet minimum legal standards for asylum accommodation; nor did the process for...
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 of State confessed to the court that she was not sure...
In the recent High Court case of R (Arman & Anor) v SSHD [2021] EWHC 1217 (Admin), Mr Justice Mostyn made comments about remote hearings that may be a straw in the wind suggesting that it will be harder to argue the unfairness of out-of-country appeals in future. Background: arguments...
In this edition of “have I got immigration news for you”, we look at the case of Mahabir v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC 1177 (Admin), in which the High Court found that the Home Office had caused a “colossal interference” with the right of a...
Rules restricting migrants’ access to benefits are back in the spotlight following a new High Court decision, which found that aspects of the “no recourse to public funds” (NRPF) scheme fail to protect the rights of children. The case of ST (a child, by his Litigation Friend VW) & VW...
From ‘Citizens of the UK and Colonies’, to ‘Commonwealth Citizens’, to ‘subject to immigration control’: the legislative erosion of the Windrush generation’s British citizenship rights is laid bare at paragraphs 1-5 of R (Howard) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC 1023 (Admin). Anyone with an interest...
Huson v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Entry Clearance Officer) (Rev 1) [2021] EWHC 885 (Admin) looks like a case about a 19-year- old’s entitlement to the right of abode. We don’t see many right of abode cases these days, mainly because since 1 January 1983 the only...
Here on Free Movement we have been repeating until we are blue in the face that the deadline for EU Settlement Scheme applications is 30 June 2021. Regular readers may by now feel rather bludgeoned over the head with this fact, but it remains a vitally important message given that...
