JR-2023-LON-001981
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The decision
JR-2023-LON-001981
In the Upper Tribunal
(Immigration and Asylum Chamber)
Judicial Review
In the matter of an application for Judicial Review
The King on the application of
Ashokkumar Dhandapani
Applicant
and
Secretary of State for the Home Department
Respondent
ORDER
BEFORE Upper Tribunal Judge Hirst
HAVING considered all documents lodged and having heard Zane Malik KC of counsel for the Applicant and Michael Biggs of counsel for the Respondent at a hearing on 15 May 2026
IT IS ORDERED THAT:
(1) The application for judicial review is dismissed.
(2) The Applicant is to pay the Respondent’s costs of the proceedings in the Upper Tribunal, to be assessed if not agreed.
(3) Permission to appeal is refused.
Reasons
The Applicant seeks permission to appeal on the basis that the Upper Tribunal erred in its approach to the findings of fact and reached conclusions inconsistent with the judgment of the Court of Appeal which granted permission for judicial review and remitted the case to the Upper Tribunal for a substantive hearing.
The Applicant does not specify how the Upper Tribunal erred, nor how its conclusions were inconsistent with the permission judgment of the Court of Appeal. The Tribunal heard oral evidence and the findings reached were open to it on the evidence for the reasons given in the judgment. The proposed appeal does not have a realistic prospect of success and permission to appeal is refused.
Signed: L Hirst
Upper Tribunal Judge Hirst
Dated: 28 July 2026
The date on which this order was sent is given below
For completion by the Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber
Sent / Handed to the applicant, respondent and any interested party / the applicant's, respondent’s and any interested party’s solicitors on (date): 30/07/2026
Solicitors:
Ref No.
Home Office Ref:
Notification of appeal rights
A decision by the Upper Tribunal on an application for judicial review is a decision that disposes of proceedings.
A party may appeal against such a decision to the Court of Appeal on a point of law only. Any party who wishes to appeal should apply to the Upper Tribunal for permission, at the hearing at which the decision is given. If no application is made, the Tribunal must nonetheless consider at the hearing whether to give or refuse permission to appeal (rule 44(4B) of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008).
If the Tribunal refuses permission, either in response to an application or by virtue of rule 44(4B), then the party wishing to appeal can apply for permission from the Court of Appeal itself. This must be done by filing an appellant’s notice with the Civil Appeals Office of the Court of Appeal within 28 days of the date the Tribunal’s decision on permission to appeal was sent (Civil Procedure Rules Practice Direction 52D 3.3).
Case No: JR-2023-LON-001981
IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
(IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER)
Field House,
Breams Buildings
London, EC4A 1WR
28 July 2026
Before:
UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE HIRST
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Between:
THE KING
on the application of
ASHOKKUMAR DHANDAPANI
Applicant
- and -
SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Zane Malik KC
(instructed by KT Solicitors Limited), for the Applicant
Michael Biggs
(instructed by the Government Legal Department) for the Respondent
Hearing date: 15 May 2026
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
J U D G M E N T
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Judge Hirst:
Introduction
1. The Applicant seeks judicial review of the Respondent's alleged failure to give notice of a decision dated 23 March 2023 cancelling his leave to remain with effect from 22 May 2023 (‘the cancellation decision’).
2. The Applicant is an Indian national. He entered the UK on 23 December 2021 with leave to enter as a Tier 4 (General) Student valid from 14 December 2021 to 18 August 2023. He subsequently ceased studying and on 18 July 2022 Sheffield Hallam University, the Applicant’s sponsor, informed the Respondent that the Applicant was no longer sponsored. That led to the cancellation decision on 23 March 2023.
3. The sole issue in this claim is whether notice of the cancellation decision was validly served on the Applicant. The Respondent maintains that written notice of the cancellation decision was sent on 23 March 2023 to the email address provided by the Applicant when he applied for his student visa, and that delivery of the email was confirmed by a delivery receipt. The Applicant maintains that he did not receive notice of the cancellation decision and was not aware that his leave had been cancelled until early June 2023 when he checked his right to work.
4. On 24 June 2023 solicitors then acting for the Applicant served a letter before action on the Respondent requesting that the Respondent provide a curtailment notice. On 27 June 2023 the Respondent replied, stating that the Home Office record showed that the Applicant’s leave had been curtailed by notice served by email on 23 March 2023. On 20 July 2023 the Respondent sent a copy of the curtailment notice to the Applicant.
5. On 4 September 2023 the Applicant issued this claim for judicial review. Permission was refused on the papers on 14 December 2023 and at an oral hearing on 11 March 2024. The Applicant appealed to the Court of Appeal, which on 7 October 2025 granted permission to apply for judicial review and remitted the claim to the Upper Tribunal for determination (R (Dhandapani) v SSHD [2025] EWCA Civ 1244).
6. The claim was listed for a substantive hearing on 15 May 2026. On 12 May 2026, on joint application by the parties, I made an order permitting oral evidence and cross-examination of witnesses. At the hearing I heard oral evidence from three witnesses: the Applicant, Mr Seemampillai on behalf of the Applicant and Mr O’Neill on behalf of the Respondent. I reserved my judgment, which is given with reasons below.
Legal framework
7. The legal framework in this claim is not in dispute. Section 3(1) of the Immigration Act 1971 confers a power on the Secretary of State to grant leave to enter or remain either for a limited or for an indefinite period. Section 3(3) of the Act provides, so far as relevant:
“(3) In the case of a limited leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom,-
(a) a person’s leave may be varied, whether by restricting, enlarging or removing the limit on its duration, or by adding, varying or revoking conditions…”
8. Section 4 of the 1971 Act provides, so far as relevant:
“(1) The power under this Act to give or refuse leave to enter the United Kingdom shall be exercised by immigration officers, and the power to give leave to remain in the United Kingdom, or to vary any leave under section 3(3)(a) (whether as regards duration or conditions)…shall be exercised by the Secretary of State; and unless otherwise allowed by or under this Act, those powers shall be exercised by notice in writing given to the person affected, except that the powers under section 3(3)(a) may be exercised generally in respect of any class of persons by order made by statutory instrument.
…”
9. Article 8ZA of the Immigration (Leave to Enter and Remain) Order 2000 (SI 2000/1161) (‘the 2000 Order’) provides, so far as relevant:
“(1) a notice in writing…
(d) varying a person’s leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom,
may be given to the person affected as required by section 4(1) of the Act as follows.
(2) The notice may be-
…
(d) sent electronically to an e-mail address provided for correspondence by the person or the person’s representative;
…
(4) Where attempts to give notice in accordance with paragraphs (2) and (3) are not possible or have failed, when the decision-maker records the reasons for this and places the notice on file the notice shall be deemed to have been given.”
10. Article 8ZB of the 2000 Order (‘Presumptions about receipt of notice’), provides, so far as relevant:
“(1) Where a notice is sent in accordance with article 8ZA, it shall be deemed to have been given to the person affected, unless the contrary is proved-
…
(b) where the notice is sent by fax, e-mail, document exchange or courier, on the day it was sent.
…”
11. In R(Alam) v SSHD [2020] EWCA Civ 1527, [2021] Imm AR 516, Floyd LJ (with whom the other members of the Court agreed) explained at §19:
“Article 8ZB(1) only creates a rebuttable presumption which arises if one of the methods of sending in Article 8ZA is followed. In those circumstances…Article 8ZB (a) deems the use of the methods of sending in Article 8ZA to be the valid giving of notice and (b) deems that notice to have given on the specified day, but leaves the person affected (or for that matter the SSHD if the need arises) free to prove (a) that he was not in fact given notice and/or (b) that it was not given on that day.”
12. Floyd LJ concluded (at §29) that ‘giving of notice’ for the purposes of s4(1) of the 1971 Act and the 2000 Order required only that notice be received by the recipient; it did not require that the notice be read or absorbed by him or that he be made aware of the notice. At §31, Floyd LJ noted:
“31. It follows that the burden of proving the negative, non-receipt, in the face of convincing evidence leading to the expectation of receipt, will not be lightly discharged. In particular it will not be discharged by evidence, far less by mere assertion, that the notice did not come to the attention of the person affected.”
13. Alam was a case involving service by post, but in R (Escobar) v SSHD [2024] 1 WLR 4939, Sheldon J held that the same principles applied to service by email. In Escobar, the claimant had attempted to rebut the presumption of service by suggesting that his estranged spouse might have deleted the email before he could have become aware of it. Whilst accepting that convincing evidence of third party interception of an email might rebut the presumption of notice, on the facts the court rejected the claimant’s explanation as “mere conjecture” which was not supported by the evidence (§34).
Witness evidence
14. Somewhat unusually in the context of a claim for judicial review, and by agreement between the parties, I heard oral evidence from three witnesses.
15. The Applicant adopted his witness statements dated 1 September 2023 and 4 April 2024. In cross-examination he stated that he had stopped studying because he had been cheated by his agent and was unable to pay the course fees. He stated that he had been “de-enrolled” by Sheffield Hallam in July or September 2022. He was unable to find another academic sponsor, although he had approached two institutions with lower fees. He was not aware that he needed to inform the Home Office that he was unable to study, although he was aware that because Sheffield Hallam had de-enrolled him his leave could be cancelled. Friends suggested that he apply for leave as a Skilled Worker and he therefore attempted to find an employer who could sponsor him in November or December 2022. He was regularly checking his right to work online, but in June 2023 he checked and found it was not showing. He contacted his solicitor, who advised him to check his inbox, including the deleted messages, spam and junk folders. He did not see any email cancelling his leave. He agreed it was possible that the email from the Home Office had gone to his spam folder and been deleted automatically, but reiterated that he had not seen any email.
16. Attached to the Applicant’s second statement was a one-page printout of an email inbox. He stated that the email address had been set up by the agent, who had logged into it on the Applicant’s phone. The inbox image did not have a date indicating when it was printed, but it showed seven emails dating between 13 July and 9 August 2022. The Applicant also provided printouts, also undated, showing empty trash and spam folders. He stated that he had made the printouts of his email folders in June 2023, just after he learned that his right to work had been cancelled. The Applicant maintained in cross-examination that he never deleted emails and kept everything he received. When asked why there was nothing in his spam folder, he stated that he did regular maintenance.
17. Mr Roystan Seemampillai adopted his statement dated 19 April 2024 and was cross-examined. He confirmed that in May 2023 the Applicant approached him and submitted his CV in response to an advertisement for a shop manager position. The Applicant had later told him that his right to work was not showing. He had reviewed the Applicant’s inbox after the Applicant told him he had not received a curtailment email and there was no email there.
18. Mr Michael O’Neill, an Executive Officer in the Home Office Cancellation Team, adopted his statement dated 8 January 2026 and was cross-examined. Mr O’Neill was part of the Cancellation Team at the time of the decision in the Applicant’s case, although he had not himself made the decision. Mr O’Neill’s evidence was that the cancellation notice was emailed by his colleague to the Applicant’s email address. The email address used was the one provided by the Applicant when he made his visa application, and was the one used to notify the Applicant that his visa application had been successful. An email delivery receipt confirmed that the message had been delivered on 23 March 2023 at 15:33:51. The delivery receipt was however held in the ‘quarantined’ folder of the relevant Home Office email account as a suspected phishing email, and was therefore not recorded on the Home Office GSCID/Atlas computerised record system. By the time that Mr O’Neill checked the quarantined folder, the delivery receipt email itself was no longer available to read. However, it was in a list of quarantined messages sent to the Home Office Cancellations inbox on 24 March 2023 which was exhibited to Mr O’Neill’s witness statement. The relevant entry in the list of quarantined messages read:
“Sender: postmaster@outlook.com
Subject: Delivered: Important Notice from the Home Office – Decision to cancel leave – XXXXXX097 – MA
Date: 23/03/2023 15:33:51”
Mr O’Neill’s evidence was that if an email was not delivered, the Home Office would receive a bounce back or non-delivery notification, which caseworkers are required to record on GSCID/Atlas. There was no record of a non-delivery notification in the Applicant’s case.
19. Mr O’Neill stated that in his experience it was common for individuals to state that they had not received emails from the Home Office, but in every case he had dealt with there was a delivery receipt. He accepted that emails could be automatically intercepted and quarantined or sent to the junk mail folder, but stated that they were still within the control of the recipient at that point. He rejected the suggestion that a non-delivery notification might have been received in the Applicant’s case but automatically diverted to the Home Office quarantined or junk folder, because the delivery receipt entry showed that the message had been delivered to the Applicant’s email.
Discussion and conclusion
20. The sole issue in this case is whether notice of the cancellation decision of 23 March 2023 was validly given to the Applicant in accordance with s4(1) of the Immigration Act 1971 and articles 8ZA-8ZB of the 2000 Order.
21. Article 8ZB(1) establishes a presumption that notice has been given to the person affected where one of the methods of notice in Article 8ZA is used. The burden is on the Respondent to demonstrate that such a method has been used to effect service.
22. I accept the witness evidence of Mr O’Neill, which was frank, detailed and supported by the contemporaneous records from the Respondent's Atlas/GCID system. Those records show a case note (created on 23 March 2023 at 15:23) stating that a cancellation notice was issued to the Applicant from the Home Office Curtailments inbox, and a further record dated 23 March 2023 at 15:34 tracking the despatch via email of a decision letter.
23. I also accept Mr O’Neill’s evidence that an email delivery receipt was received by the Home Office, although it was automatically quarantined by the email system. I find that whilst the delivery receipt itself could not be recovered at the time Mr O’Neill prepared his statement, the entry in the list of quarantined messages exhibited to the statement demonstrates that a delivery receipt was received showing that the cancellation decision was delivered to the Applicant’s email address at 15:33:51 on 23 March 2023. I accept that there was no evidence of any delivery failure on the Home Office system. I therefore find that the cancellation decision was sent by email by the Respondent on 23 March 2023 to the email address on file for the Applicant and was delivered to that email address at 15:33:51.
24. There is therefore a rebuttable presumption, pursuant to Article 8ZB of the 2000 Order, that notice was validly served on the Applicant on 23 March 2023.
25. The burden is then on the Applicant to prove that he did not receive the notice. ‘Receipt’ in this context does not require that the recipient must have read or absorbed the contents of the notice, nor even that the recipient is aware of the notice: Alam at §29. All that is required is that the notice is received, i.e. that the method of service is successfully concluded. In Alam, a case involving physical mail rather than email, Floyd LJ stated at §30:
“…Receipt of an email, for example, will be effected by the arrival of the email in the Inbox of the person affected. Likewise, documents arriving by post will normally be received if they arrive, addressed to the person affected at the dwelling where he or she is living, at least in the absence of positive evidence that mail which so arrives is intercepted. A document received at an address provided to the SSHD for correspondence is received by the applicant, even if he does not bother to take steps to collect it.”
26. As Floyd LJ noted at §31, the burden of proving non-receipt in the face of evidence which triggers the presumption of notice is not lightly discharged, and in particular “it will not be discharged by evidence, far less by mere assertion, that the notice did not come to the attention of the person affected.”
27. The Applicant maintains that he did not receive the email of 23 March 2023. His original position, as set out in the grounds of claim, was that in the absence of proof that the cancellation decision had been sent to him, he was not required to prove non-receipt. However, the Applicant has not subsequently amended his case following service of Mr O’Neill’s statement and supporting documents, including the quarantined delivery receipt exhibited to the statement.
28. The result is that the Applicant has not put forward a positive case to rebut the presumption of notice. His case before me, at its highest, is that he was not aware that his leave had been cancelled until June 2023 when he checked his right to work, and that at that point there was no cancellation email in his inbox, spam or deleted email folders. He maintains that he did not receive the cancellation decision until 20 July 2023 when a copy was served by the Respondent in response to pre-action correspondence.
29. I did not find the Applicant an impressive or credible witness. There were significant discrepancies between his oral evidence and his witness statements. For example, the Applicant’s account in oral evidence was that he had stopped studying because he had been financially cheated by his agent and could not afford the course fees, and that was why he was unable to find another course provider. However, neither of the Applicant’s witness statements referred to being cheated by his agent or to financial difficulties; instead, they stated that he could not enrol with another provider as his visa conditions required him to study at Sheffield Hallam. Similarly, the Applicant’s witness statement stated that he had been advised to wait until he received notice of the curtailment of his leave to find a different academic sponsor, and that he approached other institutions only after he was served with the curtailment. His oral evidence, on the other hand, was that he had tried to find another sponsor before he became aware that his leave had been curtailed, but had been unable to pay the course fees. The Applicant’s first statement made no reference to trying to switch to the Skilled Worker route, whereas his second statement and his oral evidence stated that that was the reason he found out that his leave had been cancelled.
30. I do not accept the Applicant’s oral evidence that he had never deleted any emails and that the inbox image exhibited to his second statement showed a complete record of all emails he had ever received. That same email address was used to notify the Applicant of his successful student visa application prior to his entry to the UK in December 2021 but there were no emails listed prior to July 2022, indicating that the printout was at best a partial list of the emails received by that account. I do not find it credible that the Applicant would only have received a total of seven emails between July and August 2022 and not have received any other emails from his university or other sources, including during the period when he was studying. The Applicant’s evidence in this respect was also at odds with Mr Seemampillai’s evidence, which was that when looking through the Applicant’s inbox in May 2023 he had to scroll down several pages. Nor do I accept that the Applicant would carry out regular maintenance on his spam folder to ensure it remained empty but that he would not delete read emails or empty his recycling folder; the Applicant did not explain why he would maintain one folder within his account but not the others.
31. Mr Seemampillai’s evidence demonstrates only that when he checked the Applicant’s email account, after the interview in May 2023, the cancellation email was not showing in the Applicant’s inbox. He did not check the Applicant’s other folders. Whilst I accept Mr Seemampillai’s evidence as truthful, even taken at its highest it does not demonstrate that the cancellation decision was not received by the Applicant on 23 March 2023.
32. I permitted the Applicant to rely on an expert report by Natasha Howarath, a Senior Digital Forensic Investigator at CYFOR Forensics. dated 31 March 2026. Ms Howarath reviewed the documents bundle, including the witness statements of the witnesses who appeared before me. She states in her summary of findings that “it is possible that an email from the Home Office could be delivered to the junk/spam folder within an email account and be deleted after 30 days” and/or that an email could be delivered to a folder other than the inbox or junk/spam folder under a user-created rule. At section 4.1 of her report, she states “It is not possible to retrospectively prove that an email was not received”.
33. Ms Howarath’s expertise was not challenged by the Respondent and I accept her report. However, the report does not materially assist the Applicant in rebutting the presumption of notice. I am prepared to accept the possibility identified by Ms Howarath that the cancellation notice email may have been automatically routed to the Applicant’s junk/spam folder without his being aware of it, although I note that there is no evidence before me indicating that that is in fact what happened.
34. However, even if the cancellation notice email were re-routed without the Applicant’s knowledge, that situation seems to me analogous to the “mail on the hall table” situation described at §29 of Alam. The mail on the table has been ‘received’ for the purposes of notice, because it has been successfully delivered to the correct address, whether or not the intended recipient is aware that the mail has been put on the hall table or is checking the table for his post. Likewise, it seems to me that an email is ‘received’ for the purposes of notice when it is successfully delivered to the recipient’s email address, whether or not it is routed automatically to a junk or other sub-folder within the account after receipt. The email cannot be placed in a sub-folder without having been received. Even if the cancellation decision was re-routed automatically to a junk folder without the Applicant’s awareness, therefore, that does not demonstrate that the notice was not received by the Applicant for the purposes of the 2000 Order and s4(1) of the 1971 Act.
35. I am supported in that conclusion by the judgment of Lane J in Berow v Maidstone Borough Council [2026] EWHC 635 (Admin), in which the Administrative Court concluded that notice of a licencing revocation decision was effective notwithstanding that it had been received into a spam folder. Mr Malik KC for the Applicant attempted in oral submissions to distinguish Berow on the basis that in that case, there had been a previous pattern of email correspondence between the parties and the recipient was aware that his licence had been revoked (Berow at §57). The Applicant’s position was different; the Applicant had not been aware that his leave had been curtailed. Mr Malik submitted that automatic re-routing of the cancellation email to the Applicant’s spam folder, without the Applicant’s knowledge, was akin to the third-party interception identified in Escobar and did not constitute valid notice for the purposes of the 2000 Order.
36. I am unable to accept those submissions. First, there is no evidence before me that the cancellation email was in fact re-routed to the Applicant’s spam folder. The possibility that the email was re-routed is floated by the Applicant, and identified in Ms Howarath’s report, but it is not put forward as a positive case. Indeed, the suggestion that the cancellation email was re-routed to the Applicant’s spam folder without the Applicant’s knowledge is at odds with the Applicant’s own evidence that he regularly deleted emails from the spam folder. On the Applicant’s evidence, he would therefore have been aware if the cancellation notice email had appeared in his spam folder. As in Escobar I note the lack of evidence in support of the Applicant’s suggestion that the email was diverted. Although Ms Howarath is a digital forensics specialist, she appears to only have been provided with documentary evidence and was not asked to interrogate the Applicant’s phone or email account. The evidence falls far short of the “convincing evidence” required to rebut the presumption of notice: Alam at §31.
37. Second, I do not accept that the factual matrix in Berow was materially different to the Applicant’s case. Although, on the Applicant’s case, he was not aware that a cancellation decision had been taken, his oral evidence was clear that he was aware that he needed to regularise his position after his university de-enrolled him, which was why he approached other institutions and then sought sponsorship as a Skilled Worker. The Applicant had previously received email communications relating to his visa from the Home Office, and his email account had been set up for the purposes of his student visa. The Appellant’s evidence is that he was regularly monitoring his right to work via the Home Office’s online portal; like the claimant in Berow, it would have been reasonable for the Applicant to check his email account regularly once he became aware of his de-enrolment by his university.
38. Lastly, Mr Malik’s suggestion that the re-routing of email to a spam folder could not constitute service is an interpretation of the 2000 Order which is both legally and practically unworkable. The 2000 Order provides clear ‘bright line’ rules governing how and when service for the purposes of s4(1) of the Immigration Act 1971 is effected. The clarity and certainty of the 2000 Order, and the efficacy of email as a method of service would be substantially undermined if effective service by email depended in every case on how the recipient’s email system treated the email once received. The interpretation sought by Mr Malik would also make email as a service method obviously open to abuse. Neither result can have been the intention of Parliament.
39. I therefore reject the Applicant’s argument that if the cancellation notice email was re-routed to a spam folder without his knowledge on or after 23 March 2023, he was not validly served with the notice.
40. I find that the cancellation decision of 23 March 2023 was served on the Applicant by email on the same day, and that the Applicant has not rebutted the presumption that notice has been given for the purposes of s4(1) of the 1971 Act. In the circumstances it is unnecessary for me to address the Respondent's alternative case that the claim for judicial review is academic.
41. The claim for judicial review is dismissed. The parties are invited to agree an order addressing consequential matters.
~~~~0~~~~
In the Upper Tribunal
(Immigration and Asylum Chamber)
Judicial Review
In the matter of an application for Judicial Review
The King on the application of
Ashokkumar Dhandapani
Applicant
and
Secretary of State for the Home Department
Respondent
ORDER
BEFORE Upper Tribunal Judge Hirst
HAVING considered all documents lodged and having heard Zane Malik KC of counsel for the Applicant and Michael Biggs of counsel for the Respondent at a hearing on 15 May 2026
IT IS ORDERED THAT:
(1) The application for judicial review is dismissed.
(2) The Applicant is to pay the Respondent’s costs of the proceedings in the Upper Tribunal, to be assessed if not agreed.
(3) Permission to appeal is refused.
Reasons
The Applicant seeks permission to appeal on the basis that the Upper Tribunal erred in its approach to the findings of fact and reached conclusions inconsistent with the judgment of the Court of Appeal which granted permission for judicial review and remitted the case to the Upper Tribunal for a substantive hearing.
The Applicant does not specify how the Upper Tribunal erred, nor how its conclusions were inconsistent with the permission judgment of the Court of Appeal. The Tribunal heard oral evidence and the findings reached were open to it on the evidence for the reasons given in the judgment. The proposed appeal does not have a realistic prospect of success and permission to appeal is refused.
Signed: L Hirst
Upper Tribunal Judge Hirst
Dated: 28 July 2026
The date on which this order was sent is given below
For completion by the Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber
Sent / Handed to the applicant, respondent and any interested party / the applicant's, respondent’s and any interested party’s solicitors on (date): 30/07/2026
Solicitors:
Ref No.
Home Office Ref:
Notification of appeal rights
A decision by the Upper Tribunal on an application for judicial review is a decision that disposes of proceedings.
A party may appeal against such a decision to the Court of Appeal on a point of law only. Any party who wishes to appeal should apply to the Upper Tribunal for permission, at the hearing at which the decision is given. If no application is made, the Tribunal must nonetheless consider at the hearing whether to give or refuse permission to appeal (rule 44(4B) of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008).
If the Tribunal refuses permission, either in response to an application or by virtue of rule 44(4B), then the party wishing to appeal can apply for permission from the Court of Appeal itself. This must be done by filing an appellant’s notice with the Civil Appeals Office of the Court of Appeal within 28 days of the date the Tribunal’s decision on permission to appeal was sent (Civil Procedure Rules Practice Direction 52D 3.3).
Case No: JR-2023-LON-001981
IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
(IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER)
Field House,
Breams Buildings
London, EC4A 1WR
28 July 2026
Before:
UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE HIRST
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Between:
THE KING
on the application of
ASHOKKUMAR DHANDAPANI
Applicant
- and -
SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Zane Malik KC
(instructed by KT Solicitors Limited), for the Applicant
Michael Biggs
(instructed by the Government Legal Department) for the Respondent
Hearing date: 15 May 2026
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
J U D G M E N T
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Judge Hirst:
Introduction
1. The Applicant seeks judicial review of the Respondent's alleged failure to give notice of a decision dated 23 March 2023 cancelling his leave to remain with effect from 22 May 2023 (‘the cancellation decision’).
2. The Applicant is an Indian national. He entered the UK on 23 December 2021 with leave to enter as a Tier 4 (General) Student valid from 14 December 2021 to 18 August 2023. He subsequently ceased studying and on 18 July 2022 Sheffield Hallam University, the Applicant’s sponsor, informed the Respondent that the Applicant was no longer sponsored. That led to the cancellation decision on 23 March 2023.
3. The sole issue in this claim is whether notice of the cancellation decision was validly served on the Applicant. The Respondent maintains that written notice of the cancellation decision was sent on 23 March 2023 to the email address provided by the Applicant when he applied for his student visa, and that delivery of the email was confirmed by a delivery receipt. The Applicant maintains that he did not receive notice of the cancellation decision and was not aware that his leave had been cancelled until early June 2023 when he checked his right to work.
4. On 24 June 2023 solicitors then acting for the Applicant served a letter before action on the Respondent requesting that the Respondent provide a curtailment notice. On 27 June 2023 the Respondent replied, stating that the Home Office record showed that the Applicant’s leave had been curtailed by notice served by email on 23 March 2023. On 20 July 2023 the Respondent sent a copy of the curtailment notice to the Applicant.
5. On 4 September 2023 the Applicant issued this claim for judicial review. Permission was refused on the papers on 14 December 2023 and at an oral hearing on 11 March 2024. The Applicant appealed to the Court of Appeal, which on 7 October 2025 granted permission to apply for judicial review and remitted the claim to the Upper Tribunal for determination (R (Dhandapani) v SSHD [2025] EWCA Civ 1244).
6. The claim was listed for a substantive hearing on 15 May 2026. On 12 May 2026, on joint application by the parties, I made an order permitting oral evidence and cross-examination of witnesses. At the hearing I heard oral evidence from three witnesses: the Applicant, Mr Seemampillai on behalf of the Applicant and Mr O’Neill on behalf of the Respondent. I reserved my judgment, which is given with reasons below.
Legal framework
7. The legal framework in this claim is not in dispute. Section 3(1) of the Immigration Act 1971 confers a power on the Secretary of State to grant leave to enter or remain either for a limited or for an indefinite period. Section 3(3) of the Act provides, so far as relevant:
“(3) In the case of a limited leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom,-
(a) a person’s leave may be varied, whether by restricting, enlarging or removing the limit on its duration, or by adding, varying or revoking conditions…”
8. Section 4 of the 1971 Act provides, so far as relevant:
“(1) The power under this Act to give or refuse leave to enter the United Kingdom shall be exercised by immigration officers, and the power to give leave to remain in the United Kingdom, or to vary any leave under section 3(3)(a) (whether as regards duration or conditions)…shall be exercised by the Secretary of State; and unless otherwise allowed by or under this Act, those powers shall be exercised by notice in writing given to the person affected, except that the powers under section 3(3)(a) may be exercised generally in respect of any class of persons by order made by statutory instrument.
…”
9. Article 8ZA of the Immigration (Leave to Enter and Remain) Order 2000 (SI 2000/1161) (‘the 2000 Order’) provides, so far as relevant:
“(1) a notice in writing…
(d) varying a person’s leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom,
may be given to the person affected as required by section 4(1) of the Act as follows.
(2) The notice may be-
…
(d) sent electronically to an e-mail address provided for correspondence by the person or the person’s representative;
…
(4) Where attempts to give notice in accordance with paragraphs (2) and (3) are not possible or have failed, when the decision-maker records the reasons for this and places the notice on file the notice shall be deemed to have been given.”
10. Article 8ZB of the 2000 Order (‘Presumptions about receipt of notice’), provides, so far as relevant:
“(1) Where a notice is sent in accordance with article 8ZA, it shall be deemed to have been given to the person affected, unless the contrary is proved-
…
(b) where the notice is sent by fax, e-mail, document exchange or courier, on the day it was sent.
…”
11. In R(Alam) v SSHD [2020] EWCA Civ 1527, [2021] Imm AR 516, Floyd LJ (with whom the other members of the Court agreed) explained at §19:
“Article 8ZB(1) only creates a rebuttable presumption which arises if one of the methods of sending in Article 8ZA is followed. In those circumstances…Article 8ZB (a) deems the use of the methods of sending in Article 8ZA to be the valid giving of notice and (b) deems that notice to have given on the specified day, but leaves the person affected (or for that matter the SSHD if the need arises) free to prove (a) that he was not in fact given notice and/or (b) that it was not given on that day.”
12. Floyd LJ concluded (at §29) that ‘giving of notice’ for the purposes of s4(1) of the 1971 Act and the 2000 Order required only that notice be received by the recipient; it did not require that the notice be read or absorbed by him or that he be made aware of the notice. At §31, Floyd LJ noted:
“31. It follows that the burden of proving the negative, non-receipt, in the face of convincing evidence leading to the expectation of receipt, will not be lightly discharged. In particular it will not be discharged by evidence, far less by mere assertion, that the notice did not come to the attention of the person affected.”
13. Alam was a case involving service by post, but in R (Escobar) v SSHD [2024] 1 WLR 4939, Sheldon J held that the same principles applied to service by email. In Escobar, the claimant had attempted to rebut the presumption of service by suggesting that his estranged spouse might have deleted the email before he could have become aware of it. Whilst accepting that convincing evidence of third party interception of an email might rebut the presumption of notice, on the facts the court rejected the claimant’s explanation as “mere conjecture” which was not supported by the evidence (§34).
Witness evidence
14. Somewhat unusually in the context of a claim for judicial review, and by agreement between the parties, I heard oral evidence from three witnesses.
15. The Applicant adopted his witness statements dated 1 September 2023 and 4 April 2024. In cross-examination he stated that he had stopped studying because he had been cheated by his agent and was unable to pay the course fees. He stated that he had been “de-enrolled” by Sheffield Hallam in July or September 2022. He was unable to find another academic sponsor, although he had approached two institutions with lower fees. He was not aware that he needed to inform the Home Office that he was unable to study, although he was aware that because Sheffield Hallam had de-enrolled him his leave could be cancelled. Friends suggested that he apply for leave as a Skilled Worker and he therefore attempted to find an employer who could sponsor him in November or December 2022. He was regularly checking his right to work online, but in June 2023 he checked and found it was not showing. He contacted his solicitor, who advised him to check his inbox, including the deleted messages, spam and junk folders. He did not see any email cancelling his leave. He agreed it was possible that the email from the Home Office had gone to his spam folder and been deleted automatically, but reiterated that he had not seen any email.
16. Attached to the Applicant’s second statement was a one-page printout of an email inbox. He stated that the email address had been set up by the agent, who had logged into it on the Applicant’s phone. The inbox image did not have a date indicating when it was printed, but it showed seven emails dating between 13 July and 9 August 2022. The Applicant also provided printouts, also undated, showing empty trash and spam folders. He stated that he had made the printouts of his email folders in June 2023, just after he learned that his right to work had been cancelled. The Applicant maintained in cross-examination that he never deleted emails and kept everything he received. When asked why there was nothing in his spam folder, he stated that he did regular maintenance.
17. Mr Roystan Seemampillai adopted his statement dated 19 April 2024 and was cross-examined. He confirmed that in May 2023 the Applicant approached him and submitted his CV in response to an advertisement for a shop manager position. The Applicant had later told him that his right to work was not showing. He had reviewed the Applicant’s inbox after the Applicant told him he had not received a curtailment email and there was no email there.
18. Mr Michael O’Neill, an Executive Officer in the Home Office Cancellation Team, adopted his statement dated 8 January 2026 and was cross-examined. Mr O’Neill was part of the Cancellation Team at the time of the decision in the Applicant’s case, although he had not himself made the decision. Mr O’Neill’s evidence was that the cancellation notice was emailed by his colleague to the Applicant’s email address. The email address used was the one provided by the Applicant when he made his visa application, and was the one used to notify the Applicant that his visa application had been successful. An email delivery receipt confirmed that the message had been delivered on 23 March 2023 at 15:33:51. The delivery receipt was however held in the ‘quarantined’ folder of the relevant Home Office email account as a suspected phishing email, and was therefore not recorded on the Home Office GSCID/Atlas computerised record system. By the time that Mr O’Neill checked the quarantined folder, the delivery receipt email itself was no longer available to read. However, it was in a list of quarantined messages sent to the Home Office Cancellations inbox on 24 March 2023 which was exhibited to Mr O’Neill’s witness statement. The relevant entry in the list of quarantined messages read:
“Sender: postmaster@outlook.com
Subject: Delivered: Important Notice from the Home Office – Decision to cancel leave – XXXXXX097 – MA
Date: 23/03/2023 15:33:51”
Mr O’Neill’s evidence was that if an email was not delivered, the Home Office would receive a bounce back or non-delivery notification, which caseworkers are required to record on GSCID/Atlas. There was no record of a non-delivery notification in the Applicant’s case.
19. Mr O’Neill stated that in his experience it was common for individuals to state that they had not received emails from the Home Office, but in every case he had dealt with there was a delivery receipt. He accepted that emails could be automatically intercepted and quarantined or sent to the junk mail folder, but stated that they were still within the control of the recipient at that point. He rejected the suggestion that a non-delivery notification might have been received in the Applicant’s case but automatically diverted to the Home Office quarantined or junk folder, because the delivery receipt entry showed that the message had been delivered to the Applicant’s email.
Discussion and conclusion
20. The sole issue in this case is whether notice of the cancellation decision of 23 March 2023 was validly given to the Applicant in accordance with s4(1) of the Immigration Act 1971 and articles 8ZA-8ZB of the 2000 Order.
21. Article 8ZB(1) establishes a presumption that notice has been given to the person affected where one of the methods of notice in Article 8ZA is used. The burden is on the Respondent to demonstrate that such a method has been used to effect service.
22. I accept the witness evidence of Mr O’Neill, which was frank, detailed and supported by the contemporaneous records from the Respondent's Atlas/GCID system. Those records show a case note (created on 23 March 2023 at 15:23) stating that a cancellation notice was issued to the Applicant from the Home Office Curtailments inbox, and a further record dated 23 March 2023 at 15:34 tracking the despatch via email of a decision letter.
23. I also accept Mr O’Neill’s evidence that an email delivery receipt was received by the Home Office, although it was automatically quarantined by the email system. I find that whilst the delivery receipt itself could not be recovered at the time Mr O’Neill prepared his statement, the entry in the list of quarantined messages exhibited to the statement demonstrates that a delivery receipt was received showing that the cancellation decision was delivered to the Applicant’s email address at 15:33:51 on 23 March 2023. I accept that there was no evidence of any delivery failure on the Home Office system. I therefore find that the cancellation decision was sent by email by the Respondent on 23 March 2023 to the email address on file for the Applicant and was delivered to that email address at 15:33:51.
24. There is therefore a rebuttable presumption, pursuant to Article 8ZB of the 2000 Order, that notice was validly served on the Applicant on 23 March 2023.
25. The burden is then on the Applicant to prove that he did not receive the notice. ‘Receipt’ in this context does not require that the recipient must have read or absorbed the contents of the notice, nor even that the recipient is aware of the notice: Alam at §29. All that is required is that the notice is received, i.e. that the method of service is successfully concluded. In Alam, a case involving physical mail rather than email, Floyd LJ stated at §30:
“…Receipt of an email, for example, will be effected by the arrival of the email in the Inbox of the person affected. Likewise, documents arriving by post will normally be received if they arrive, addressed to the person affected at the dwelling where he or she is living, at least in the absence of positive evidence that mail which so arrives is intercepted. A document received at an address provided to the SSHD for correspondence is received by the applicant, even if he does not bother to take steps to collect it.”
26. As Floyd LJ noted at §31, the burden of proving non-receipt in the face of evidence which triggers the presumption of notice is not lightly discharged, and in particular “it will not be discharged by evidence, far less by mere assertion, that the notice did not come to the attention of the person affected.”
27. The Applicant maintains that he did not receive the email of 23 March 2023. His original position, as set out in the grounds of claim, was that in the absence of proof that the cancellation decision had been sent to him, he was not required to prove non-receipt. However, the Applicant has not subsequently amended his case following service of Mr O’Neill’s statement and supporting documents, including the quarantined delivery receipt exhibited to the statement.
28. The result is that the Applicant has not put forward a positive case to rebut the presumption of notice. His case before me, at its highest, is that he was not aware that his leave had been cancelled until June 2023 when he checked his right to work, and that at that point there was no cancellation email in his inbox, spam or deleted email folders. He maintains that he did not receive the cancellation decision until 20 July 2023 when a copy was served by the Respondent in response to pre-action correspondence.
29. I did not find the Applicant an impressive or credible witness. There were significant discrepancies between his oral evidence and his witness statements. For example, the Applicant’s account in oral evidence was that he had stopped studying because he had been financially cheated by his agent and could not afford the course fees, and that was why he was unable to find another course provider. However, neither of the Applicant’s witness statements referred to being cheated by his agent or to financial difficulties; instead, they stated that he could not enrol with another provider as his visa conditions required him to study at Sheffield Hallam. Similarly, the Applicant’s witness statement stated that he had been advised to wait until he received notice of the curtailment of his leave to find a different academic sponsor, and that he approached other institutions only after he was served with the curtailment. His oral evidence, on the other hand, was that he had tried to find another sponsor before he became aware that his leave had been curtailed, but had been unable to pay the course fees. The Applicant’s first statement made no reference to trying to switch to the Skilled Worker route, whereas his second statement and his oral evidence stated that that was the reason he found out that his leave had been cancelled.
30. I do not accept the Applicant’s oral evidence that he had never deleted any emails and that the inbox image exhibited to his second statement showed a complete record of all emails he had ever received. That same email address was used to notify the Applicant of his successful student visa application prior to his entry to the UK in December 2021 but there were no emails listed prior to July 2022, indicating that the printout was at best a partial list of the emails received by that account. I do not find it credible that the Applicant would only have received a total of seven emails between July and August 2022 and not have received any other emails from his university or other sources, including during the period when he was studying. The Applicant’s evidence in this respect was also at odds with Mr Seemampillai’s evidence, which was that when looking through the Applicant’s inbox in May 2023 he had to scroll down several pages. Nor do I accept that the Applicant would carry out regular maintenance on his spam folder to ensure it remained empty but that he would not delete read emails or empty his recycling folder; the Applicant did not explain why he would maintain one folder within his account but not the others.
31. Mr Seemampillai’s evidence demonstrates only that when he checked the Applicant’s email account, after the interview in May 2023, the cancellation email was not showing in the Applicant’s inbox. He did not check the Applicant’s other folders. Whilst I accept Mr Seemampillai’s evidence as truthful, even taken at its highest it does not demonstrate that the cancellation decision was not received by the Applicant on 23 March 2023.
32. I permitted the Applicant to rely on an expert report by Natasha Howarath, a Senior Digital Forensic Investigator at CYFOR Forensics. dated 31 March 2026. Ms Howarath reviewed the documents bundle, including the witness statements of the witnesses who appeared before me. She states in her summary of findings that “it is possible that an email from the Home Office could be delivered to the junk/spam folder within an email account and be deleted after 30 days” and/or that an email could be delivered to a folder other than the inbox or junk/spam folder under a user-created rule. At section 4.1 of her report, she states “It is not possible to retrospectively prove that an email was not received”.
33. Ms Howarath’s expertise was not challenged by the Respondent and I accept her report. However, the report does not materially assist the Applicant in rebutting the presumption of notice. I am prepared to accept the possibility identified by Ms Howarath that the cancellation notice email may have been automatically routed to the Applicant’s junk/spam folder without his being aware of it, although I note that there is no evidence before me indicating that that is in fact what happened.
34. However, even if the cancellation notice email were re-routed without the Applicant’s knowledge, that situation seems to me analogous to the “mail on the hall table” situation described at §29 of Alam. The mail on the table has been ‘received’ for the purposes of notice, because it has been successfully delivered to the correct address, whether or not the intended recipient is aware that the mail has been put on the hall table or is checking the table for his post. Likewise, it seems to me that an email is ‘received’ for the purposes of notice when it is successfully delivered to the recipient’s email address, whether or not it is routed automatically to a junk or other sub-folder within the account after receipt. The email cannot be placed in a sub-folder without having been received. Even if the cancellation decision was re-routed automatically to a junk folder without the Applicant’s awareness, therefore, that does not demonstrate that the notice was not received by the Applicant for the purposes of the 2000 Order and s4(1) of the 1971 Act.
35. I am supported in that conclusion by the judgment of Lane J in Berow v Maidstone Borough Council [2026] EWHC 635 (Admin), in which the Administrative Court concluded that notice of a licencing revocation decision was effective notwithstanding that it had been received into a spam folder. Mr Malik KC for the Applicant attempted in oral submissions to distinguish Berow on the basis that in that case, there had been a previous pattern of email correspondence between the parties and the recipient was aware that his licence had been revoked (Berow at §57). The Applicant’s position was different; the Applicant had not been aware that his leave had been curtailed. Mr Malik submitted that automatic re-routing of the cancellation email to the Applicant’s spam folder, without the Applicant’s knowledge, was akin to the third-party interception identified in Escobar and did not constitute valid notice for the purposes of the 2000 Order.
36. I am unable to accept those submissions. First, there is no evidence before me that the cancellation email was in fact re-routed to the Applicant’s spam folder. The possibility that the email was re-routed is floated by the Applicant, and identified in Ms Howarath’s report, but it is not put forward as a positive case. Indeed, the suggestion that the cancellation email was re-routed to the Applicant’s spam folder without the Applicant’s knowledge is at odds with the Applicant’s own evidence that he regularly deleted emails from the spam folder. On the Applicant’s evidence, he would therefore have been aware if the cancellation notice email had appeared in his spam folder. As in Escobar I note the lack of evidence in support of the Applicant’s suggestion that the email was diverted. Although Ms Howarath is a digital forensics specialist, she appears to only have been provided with documentary evidence and was not asked to interrogate the Applicant’s phone or email account. The evidence falls far short of the “convincing evidence” required to rebut the presumption of notice: Alam at §31.
37. Second, I do not accept that the factual matrix in Berow was materially different to the Applicant’s case. Although, on the Applicant’s case, he was not aware that a cancellation decision had been taken, his oral evidence was clear that he was aware that he needed to regularise his position after his university de-enrolled him, which was why he approached other institutions and then sought sponsorship as a Skilled Worker. The Applicant had previously received email communications relating to his visa from the Home Office, and his email account had been set up for the purposes of his student visa. The Appellant’s evidence is that he was regularly monitoring his right to work via the Home Office’s online portal; like the claimant in Berow, it would have been reasonable for the Applicant to check his email account regularly once he became aware of his de-enrolment by his university.
38. Lastly, Mr Malik’s suggestion that the re-routing of email to a spam folder could not constitute service is an interpretation of the 2000 Order which is both legally and practically unworkable. The 2000 Order provides clear ‘bright line’ rules governing how and when service for the purposes of s4(1) of the Immigration Act 1971 is effected. The clarity and certainty of the 2000 Order, and the efficacy of email as a method of service would be substantially undermined if effective service by email depended in every case on how the recipient’s email system treated the email once received. The interpretation sought by Mr Malik would also make email as a service method obviously open to abuse. Neither result can have been the intention of Parliament.
39. I therefore reject the Applicant’s argument that if the cancellation notice email was re-routed to a spam folder without his knowledge on or after 23 March 2023, he was not validly served with the notice.
40. I find that the cancellation decision of 23 March 2023 was served on the Applicant by email on the same day, and that the Applicant has not rebutted the presumption that notice has been given for the purposes of s4(1) of the 1971 Act. In the circumstances it is unnecessary for me to address the Respondent's alternative case that the claim for judicial review is academic.
41. The claim for judicial review is dismissed. The parties are invited to agree an order addressing consequential matters.
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