- BY CJ McKinney
Asylum “lottery”: some hearing centres grant twice as many appeals
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First-tier Tribunal appeals against asylum decisions are twice as likely to succeed at some hearing centres compared to others, a BBC investigation has found.
47% of appeals succeeded at Taylor House, whereas the success rate was as low as 21% at Yarl’s Wood and 24% in Belfast. The data comes from Freedom of Information requests covering January 2013 to September 2016 and excluding fast-track cases.
Last year the nationwide success rate for FTT asylum appeals was 41%, separate Ministry of Justice statistics show.
Retired tribunal judge Catriona Jarvis told the BBC researchers that
It’s wholly wrong. It shouldn’t be a lottery.
Another practitioner said that she found the variation “not surprising at all”. Given the known differences in judging culture, legal aid supply and local specialisation – and the results of similar investigations in the past – they may not be surprising to anyone.
Source: BBC News, Asylum seekers face appeals ‘lottery’, 29 November 2017
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