All Articles: Procedure
NHS surcharge for immigration applications
A new “health surcharge” was introduced for all new applications for entry clearance or leave to remain made on or after 6 April 2015. The charge is £150 per year for students and £200 per year for all other types of application. A charge is pa ...
15th April 2015Immigration fees from 6 April 2015 published
The full list of fees for immigration applications from inside and outside the UK applying from 6 April 2015 has been published. There are some hefty and puzzling increases: a 50% hike to £162 for visiting academics for some reason, a 57% increase t ...
24th March 2015Meaning of “totally without merit”
Normally, where an application for judicial review is made the first stage is for a judge to consider the grounds for judicial review and the acknowledgement of service and summary grounds of defence, then decide without holding a hearing whether per ...
19th March 2015Full immigration appeals ended: Immigration Act 2014 brought into force
Full appeal rights for applications under the Points Based System are being ended with effect from today, 2 March 2015, and for all other cases from 6 April 2015. The initial change applies to those who make an application on or after 2 March 2015 und ...
2nd March 2015Challenging a refusal of permission to appeal by the Upper Tribunal
This piece started life as a practice note for welfare benefits cases but the same principles are transferrable to the immigration jurisdiction so we thought it would be helpful to share it here on Free Movement as well. If permission to appeal agains ...
16th February 2015Important Presidential decision on costs in immigration cases
The Presidents of the Immigration and Asylum Chambers sat together in the First-tier Tribunal case of Cancino (costs – First-tier Tribunal – new powers) [2015] UKFTT 00059 (IAC) in order to give guidance on when legal costs might become payable in ...
13th February 2015Witness statements by advocates
Where something goes badly wrong at a hearing it is sometimes necessary for the advocate who was present to explain events as part of the appeal process. It has become customary in immigration proceedings for the advocate to have to write a witness st ...
28th January 2015“Wing and a prayer” grounds of appeal criticised by President
President Mr Justice McCloskey has criticised the Home Office for submitting “wing and a prayer” grounds of appeal to the Upper Tribunal and the judge who granted permission to appeal. The case is MR (permission to appeal: Tribunal’s app ...
27th January 2015Home Office misleads Tribunal Procedure Committee
In a curious turn of events, the Home Office wrote to the Tribunal Procedure Committee late last year to ‘fess up to having mislead the committee about Home Office policy on withdrawal of decisions. This is an issue we’ve covered before on ...
20th January 2015Judicial toolkit for dealing with miscreant immigration lawyers
The previously reported case of R (on the application of Bilal Mahmood) v Secretary of State for the home Department (candour/reassessment duties; ETS :alternative remedy) IJR [2014] UKUT 439 (IAC) has been re-titled and I think the headnote has been ...
7th January 2015Legal Aid and ‘exceptional’ case funding
In an important and wide-ranging judgment the Court of Appeal in R (on the application of Gudanaviciene & Ors) v The Director of Legal Aid Casework & Ors [2014] EWCA Civ 1622 has upheld Collins J’s finding that the Exceptional Case Funding ( ...
22nd December 2014Unwanted anonymity and gagging orders
I’ve now come across two cases in which judges of the First-tier Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber have imposed unwanted anonymity orders on parties without any application or notice. One case is reported here and the other can’t be ...
17th December 2014Litigants in person, costs, consent orders …and Hamlet
The case of R (on the application of Muwonge) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (consent orders: costs: guidance) (IJR) [2014] UKUT 514 (IAC) makes for interesting law and interesting reading. It is, apart from anything, the first case I c ...
21st November 2014New immigration tribunal procedure rules: analysis
The First-tier Tribunal now has a new set of procedure rules: the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Rules 2014, which came into force on 20 October 2014. The Rules are streamlined in some parts and the overridin ...
20th November 2014Tribunal criticised for conducting own research
East of England Ambulance Service Nhs Trust v Sanders (Practice and Procedure) [2014] UKEAT 0217/14/1710 is an interesting employment case involving a litigant in person via Neil Rose. I do not think it is at all unusual for immigration tribunal judg ...
20th November 2014New duty to keep Home Office informed
When reviewing the Home Office’s new Appeals Guidance policy document I was reminded of a new feature of the appeals regime that is an important one but which was tucked away in the schedules to the Immigration Act 2014. A new expanded section 1 ...
29th October 2014Immigration Act 2014 Commencement Order No. 3: analysis
Even aside from the issue of an unpublished law purporting to have any effect, the Immigration Act 2014 (Commencement No. 3, Transitional and Saving Provisions) Order 2014 (SI 2014/2711) is a dog’s breakfast. At first blush it appears to bri ...
20th October 2014Awards of costs in immigration tribunal appeals
For the first time, it will now be possible for the immigration tribunal to make awards of costs in statutory appeals. The power is conferred by the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Rules 2014 (SI 2014/2604), ...
17th October 2014Immigration Act 2014 appeals provisions commence 20 October 2014
Sweeping changes to appeal rights, a new non independent “administrative review” procedure and further changes to deportation appeal rights are taking effect on 20 October 2014, at least in some cases. This post will be updated as and when ...
16th October 2014New Procedure Rules come into effect 20 October 2014
As predicted, the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Rules 2014 are official and come into effect on 20 October 2014. More analysis to follow in due course for Free Movement Members. Headline changes seem to me ...
30th September 2014Compensation awarded for hearing cancelled at short notice
Given my experience on the float list at Hatton Cross this week, this successful complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman makes very interesting reading. An award of £3,600 plus interest for legal costs and £100 for inconvenience was made ...
22nd August 2014Appeals provisions of the Immigration Act 2014
The most devastating aspect of the Immigration Act 2014 (“2014 Act”) is the brutal scything of appeal rights. The Government has triumphantly declared that it has reduced the number of appeal rights from 17 (the number of immigration decisions in ...
19th August 2014New tribunal procedure rules from 20 October 2014?
At paragraph 4(b) of the newly laid Tribunal Procedure (Amendment No. 3) Rules 2014 is a reference to the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Rules 2014. These latter rules do not exist yet. As paragraph 4(b) ...
11th August 2014Looks like appeal rights abolition is coming this autumn…
Large scale recruitment of deputies for the Upper Tribunal immigration chamber can surely only mean that a LOT more work is expected there in the near future? ...
7th August 2014Ethnographic study of “culture of disbelief” at Taylor House
A fascinating study of power play and relationships inside and outside the hearing room has been published as a working paper by the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford: The culture of disbelief: an ethnographic approach to understandi ...
6th August 2014Refusal rate for family visit visas jumped after appeals abolished
The refusal rate for family visit visa applications jumped by 6 percentage points in the period after abolition of appeal rights in July 2013. ...
31st July 2014Detained fast track as presently operated unlawful
In Detention Action v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2014] EWHC 2245, Ouseley J considered a challenge to the lawfulness of the policy and practice applied by the Secretary of State in the operation of the detained fast track and conclude ...
15th July 2014Upper Tribunal procedure rule amendment on service
The Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008 are to be amended from 30 June 2014 to ensure that one party to proceedings gets notice before the other and indeed is responsible for serving the other party. Because the proceedings are immigration ...
11th June 2014“No right of appeal” human rights decisions
There can be few immigration practitioners who do not presently encounter decisions in relation to applications made on the basis of peoples’ private and family life which do not carry the right of appeal. In recent years the prevailing tendency has ...
2nd June 2014Permission required to ensure public funding in JR proceedings
The Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2014 came into force on 22 April 2014 with the effect that judicial review proceedings commenced on or after that day will not be funded unless: (a) the High Court or Upper Tribunal gr ...
19th May 2014Immigration forms collection
The team at gov.uk are making definite progress with improving the immigration bits of the website. This latest collection of all the major immigration forms is very handy. ...
2nd May 2014Child victims and protective measures
This jumped out at me from the newspaper the other day: People who may find it difficult to give their best possible evidence in a courtroom environment and all child victims will be considered in the pilot areas. This allows them to give evidence and ...
29th April 2014Ved and another (appealable decisions; permission applications; Basnet) [2014] UKUT 150 (IAC)
Ved and another (appealable decisions; permission applications; Basnet) [2014] UKUT 150 (IAC) is a new case from the Upper Tribunal on the vexed issue of immigration applications the Home Office considers to be invalid. The tribunal takes the view tha ...
28th April 2014Procedural fairness as an error of law
In a handy case that arrived just after I’d finished a Court of Appeal skeleton on the same subject, Mr Justice McCloskey has delivered another of his characteristically interesting determinations. This one is MM (unfairness; E & R) Sudan [2 ...
19th March 2014