Upper Tribunal endorses practice of judges considering permission to appeal applications against their own decisions
First-tier Tribunal judges can consider applications for permission to appeal their own decisions under processes introduced in January this year but seemingly not communicated to practitioners until much later. The decision says that “the change in practice was communicated to stakeholders at the Immigration and Asylum Chamber Improvement Group on 2 June 2025”.
The appellant had applied for permission to appeal the First-tier Tribunal’s decision on the grounds that “the FTT acted procedurally unfairly, because the same FTT judge who dismissed the substantive appeal also refused PTA in a separate decision dated 9 April 2025”. On 27 January 2025 the FtT had changed its practice to allow permission to appeal applications to be determined by the salaried judge who decided the appeal.
It appears that the change had not been communicated to practitioners at the time the application in this case was filed. The application was dismissed and the tribunal’s decision has now been reported. The case is Bittar (PTA – FTT practice) Sierra Leone [2025] UKUT 277 (IAC). The headnote reads as follows:
1. The current practice of salaried FTT judges considering PTA applications against their own decisions does not offend against the principles of procedural fairness and does not, in principle, give rise to concerns of apparent bias or a judicial mind which is closed to the merits of the application for PTA. The change promotes the most effective use of judicial time and furthers the overriding objective.
2. Judges of the FTT who consider applications for PTA will do so dispassionately and with an open mind and will give adequate reasons for their decisions. The decision on an application for PTA is not an opportunity to provide additional reasons for the substantive decision, or to defend that decision against challenge. It is particularly important that the language used in determining a PTA application does not give the impression that the judge approached that application with a closed mind.
3. A renewed application for PTA to the UT is against the substantive decision on the appeal, not the FTT’s decision on the application for PTA. The Upper Tribunal is for that reason unlikely to be assisted by extensive argument about the FTT’s decision on the application for PTA.
Sonia Lenegan is an experienced immigration, asylum and public law solicitor. She has been practising for over ten years and was previously legal director at the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association and legal and policy director at Rainbow Migration. Sonia is the Editor of Free Movement.
