Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: JR-2025-LON-002518

Field House,
Breams Buildings
London, EC4A 1WR

28 July 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE NEVILLE

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Between

THE KING
on the application of
NILIFER SANCI
Applicant
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SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Mr A Burrett, counsel
(instructed by Stuart & Co Solicitors), for the applicant

Mr N Ostrowski, counsel
(instructed by the Government Legal Department) for the respondent

Hearing date: 6 April 2026

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J U D G M E N T

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1. Mrs Sanci is a 58 year old retired widow who lives in Gazantiep, Turkey. Her adult children and a cousin live in the United Kingdom. On 6 February 2023, two large earthquakes struck southern and central Turkey and northern and western Syria. Gazantiep was just 23 miles from the first earthquake’s epicentre, and Mrs Sanci’s home was destroyed. Since then, Mrs Sanci has lived in a home made from a metal shipping container and supports herself on about £200 per month made up from her late father’s pension and disaster relief funds.
2. On 11 December 2024, Mrs Sanci applied for entry clearance to visit her family. It was her fifth application. The previous four had been refused and so too had this fifth application, but, following a pre-action protocol letter from her solicitors, the Secretary of State (acting through an official on her behalf) agreed to reconsider that refusal. The resulting decision, dated 5 May 2025, is the decision now under challenge (“the Decision”).
3. In the Decision, the Secretary of State applied the provisions of Appendix V to the Immigration Rules. In common with many routes under the Immigration Rules it contains eligibility requirements, and relevant in this case is the ‘Genuine Visitor Requirement’:
Genuine visitor requirement
V 4.2. The applicant must satisfy the decision maker that they are a genuine visitor, which means the applicant:
(a) will leave the UK at the end of their visit; and
(b) will not live in the UK for extended periods through frequent or successive visits, or make the UK their main home; and
(c) is genuinely seeking entry or stay for a purpose that is permitted under the Visitor route as set out in Appendix Visitor: Permitted Activities and at V 13.3; and
(d) will not undertake any of the prohibited activities set out in V 4.4. to V 4.6; and
(e) must have sufficient funds to cover all reasonable costs in relation to their visit without working or accessing public funds, including the cost of the return or onward journey, any costs relating to their dependants, and the cost of planned “activities such as private medical treatment. The applicant must show that any funds they rely upon are held in a financial institution permitted under FIN 2.1 in Appendix Finance.
4. Appendix Visitor: Permitted Activities, referenced at V 4.2(c), provides at PA 2 that a visitor may “visit friends and family and / or come to the UK for a holiday”.
5. In the Decision, the Secretary of State recorded Mrs Sanci’s financial circumstances. It was accepted that her UK relatives would cover the cost of her trip to the UK but found that she did not “have comfortable social and economic living standards in Turkey”. The Decision continues:
I further acknowledge a letter from you dated 07/12/2024 in which you state “I applied for a UK visa to travel and visit my children there. As I mentioned above, they all entered to the UK illegally, but I don’t want to travel like them. I am happy to live in my home country. The only reason for me to travel there to visit my children for a short period”.
In support of your application, you have provided your family registration certificate and IDs for your remaining family members who are your cousin, your daughter, son-in-law, 4 grandchildren and two sons. As you state in your letter, your entire family is resident in the UK thus you appear to have no family ties in your country of residence. I am therefore satisfied that your ties to the UK are stronger than your ties to Turkey.
Whilst I acknowledge your explanation, I am not satisfied that your personal circumstances, as well as your overall economic and family ties to your home country are such that it represents a strong reason for you to leave the UK after the limited period as stated by you, nor that you are genuinely seeking entry to stay for a purpose that is permitted under the visitor route. Your application is therefore refused under paragraph V4.2 (a) and (c) of the Immigration Rules.
The grounds for review
6. The challenge to the Decision is put on two grounds that can be summarised as follows:
1. The Secretary of State’s rejection of (a) Mrs Sanci’s genuineness and (b) her assertion that she would leave the UK after her visit, amounted to a finding of deception. The common law duty of procedural fairness required that the Secretary of State first give Mrs Sanci an opportunity, by interview or a “minded to refuse” process, to respond to those concerns.
2. In any event, the refusal decision was irrational because the Secretary of State failed to take due account of the evidence demonstrating Mrs Sanci’s economic, social and personal ties to Turkey. The conclusion that she was not a genuine visitor was not rationally supported by the evidence considered and rested on an impermissibly narrow assessment of her circumstances.
Ground 1 – Procedural Fairness
Relevant law
7. As well as Appendix V, the Immigration Rules contain separate provisions governing deception. At the time of the Refusal Decision these were contained in Part 9 of the Rules:
9.7.1. An application for entry clearance, permission to enter or permission to stay may be refused where, in relation to the application, or in order to obtain documents from the Secretary of State or a third party provided in support of the application:
(a) false representations are made, or false documents or false information submitted (whether or not relevant to the application, and whether or not to the applicant’s knowledge); or
(b) relevant facts are not disclosed.
9.7.2. An application for entry clearance, permission to enter or permission to stay must be refused where the decision maker can prove that it is more likely than not the applicant used deception in the application.
8. In setting out the nature of the duty argued as applying in this case, I begin with R (Doody) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [1993] UKHL 8. At [14], Lord Mustill derived the following relevant propositions from previous authority:
3. The principles of fairness are not to be applied by rote identically in every situation. What fairness demands is dependent on the context of the decision, and this is to be taken into account in all its aspects.
5. Fairness will very often require that a person who may be adversely affected by the decision will have an opportunity to make representations on his own behalf either before the decision is taken with a view to producing a favourable result; or after it is taken, with a view to procuring its modification; or both.
6. Since the person affected usually cannot make worthwhile representations without knowing what factors may weigh against his interests fairness will very often require that he is informed of the gist of the case which he has to answer.
9. In R (Akturk) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWHC 297 (Admin), an immigration application was refused for reasons that included:
The timing of your application, the fact you declared your visit to the United Kingdom to last 14 days (which it did not) suggest your application is more of an attempt to secure leave rather than reflective of a genuine intention to establish in business. This seriously undermines the credibility of your application and the legitimacy of it.
10. Holman J held that the facts underlying that passage were capable of supporting the conclusion reached, but did not necessarily do so. This was “a wholly unjustifiable adverse finding to make against the applicant and his application in circumstances in which none of the points taken against him in that passage had been raised with him in correspondence, asking for his comments or explanations, and no attempt had been made to arrange an interview with him”. Other adverse credibility points, being the lack of a UK bank account and questionable proficiency in English, were also rationally unsupportable in circumstances where the caseworker guidance permitted an interview. Holman J concluded that:
42. I have adverted several times above to the possibility of a face-to-face interview with the claimant, reflecting passages which I have quoted from the Secretary of State's own guidance document. When an applicant has a right of appeal to a judicial tribunal at which he can give evidence himself directly to the tribunal, the need for, and proportionality of, an interview at the earlier, administrative decision-making stage may be less; but if and in so far as appeal rights have been removed, the need for an administrative interview may have increased. Save where there is powerful documentary evidence of a lack of genuineness, it is a strong thing, and likely to be unfair; for any decision-maker to reach adverse conclusions as to integrity, credibility or legitimacy without, at some point in the process, the person concerned having the opportunity to answer questions and explain himself.
11. That conclusion was not subsequently disturbed on appeal (see Secretary of State for the Home Department v CA (Turkey) [2018] EWCA Civ 2875), the Court of Appeal having refused permission to appeal in relation to procedural fairness.
12. Balajigari v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 673 concerned applications for Indefinite Leave to Remain rejected by the Secretary of State in reliance on findings of dishonesty. The Court of Appeal summarised previous authority as establishing the following:
55. For all of those reasons, we have come to the conclusion that where the Secretary of State is minded to refuse ILR on the basis of paragraph 322 (5) on the basis of the applicant's dishonesty, or other reprehensible conduct, he is required as a matter of procedural fairness to indicate clearly to the applicant that he has that suspicion; to give the applicant an opportunity to respond, both as regards the conduct itself and as regards any other reasons relied on as regards "undesirability" and the exercise of the second-stage assessment; and then to take that response into account before drawing the conclusion that there has been such conduct.
13. A like conclusion was reached in relation to entry clearance in R (on the application of Kaur) v Entry Clearance Officer (New Delhi) (ECO allegation of deception; fairness) [2026] UKUT 80 (IAC). Mrs Kaur had submitted a bank statement in support of her application that, the ECO decided following checks with the issuing bank, was “non-genuine”. An express finding was made that she had used deception, meaning that all future applications in the next ten years would be refused pursuant to Part 9 of the Immigration Rules. UTJ Blundell held as follows:
68. In many cases in which an Entry Clearance Officer reaches a finding of deception, the consequences for the individual applicant will be very serious indeed. They will often be the subject of a lengthy ban on being granted entry clearance of leave to remain. There might also be other consequences as a result of the ECO's conclusions. Application forms for UK entry clearance and leave to remain frequently ask whether the individual has ever been refused entry or failed to comply with the immigration control regime of a third country, and I am aware that other countries understandably ask similar questions.
69. A person who has been refused entry clearance to the United Kingdom on grounds of deception might therefore be banned from entering this country for many years, and might also face additional difficulty in entering others. There might also be other contexts in which a person would be required to disclose such a refusal as it casts doubt on their character. Whilst a refusal of entry clearance does not "change the applicant's circumstances" by subjecting them to the UK's "compliant environment" (SSHD v RAMFEL [2025] EWCA Civ 1843 refers, at [26]-[27]), it is wrong to suggest that such a decision does not have serious and lasting consequences for the individual.
70. In my judgment, therefore, the duty to act fairly requires that an entry clearance applicant who is accused of deception for reasons she could not reasonably have been expected to know about, and who would face mandatory refusal of future applications on account of a finding of deception, should generally be given notice of that allegation and an opportunity to respond to it before her application is decided. […]
14. On the slightly unusual facts, which I need not set out, it was nonetheless held that Mrs Kaur had been given fair notice of the allegation and an opportunity to respond, so her challenge to the decision was dismissed.
15. The Secretary of State has, to an extent, tried to re-run the arguments in relation to visit visas rejected by UTJ Blundell. As Kaur is a reported decision of the Upper Tribunal, I treat its ratio as authoritative. I also gratefully adopt and agree with UTJ Blundell’s detailed consideration of the previous authorities, without repeating it all.
16. Finally by way of authority, it is worth highlighting parts of the judgment in R (Karagul and ors) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 3208 (Admin). Mrs Karagul had applied for Leave to Remain in order to establish herself in business. Saini J described the Secretary of State’s refusal decision as follows (the stated emphasis is that of the Judge):
10. Given its centrality to the arguments before me, I should set out in exact terms what was said in the refusal decision of 30 March 2016 by way of conclusions:
(a) “The Secretary of State is not satisfied that you genuinely wish to establish in business as proposed" (my emphasis); and
(b) “Overall, you have failed to demonstrate that you have a genuine intention to establish in business and that you have conducted a significant amount of research in order for your business to be a success” (my emphasis).
11. The 10 May 2019 AR decision recorded (in rejecting the appeal):
(a) “You claim in your application for Administrative Review that your business plan did not lack significant detail. You believe that you didn't need an intricate business plan because you do not propose to employ anyone and your overheads will be low. However even though your business model is relatively straightforward we still require a detailed business plan in order to assess the genuineness of your intentions to set up in business." (my emphasis).
(b) “118. Your failure to provide detailed information about customer service undermines the credibility of your intention to set up in business." (my emphasis).”
17. One matter in issue was whether the Secretary of State had reached a conclusion that engaged the principle in Balajigari:
103. I summarise that general principle as follows but with the caveat that its application will of necessity be modified depending on the terms of the statutory regime:
(1) Where a public authority exercising an administrative power to grant or refuse an application proposes to make a decision that the applicant for some right, benefit or status may have been dishonest in their application or has otherwise acted in bad faith (or disreputably) in relation to the application, common law fairness will generally require at least the following safeguards to be observed. Either the applicant is given a chance in a form of interview to address the claimed wrongdoing, or a form of written "minded to" process, should be followed which allows representations on the specific matter to be made prior to a final decision.
(2) Further, a process of internal administrative review of an original negative decision which bars the applicant from submitting new evidence to rebut the finding of wrongdoing is highly likely to be unfair.
(3) The need for these common law protections is particularly acute where there has been a decision by the legislature to remove an appeal on the merits to an independent and impartial tribunal.
18. Applying the principle to the facts, the Judge held:
112. In my judgment, in each of the four cases the Claimants were in substance accused by the Secretary of State of having effectively made an application with a claimed intention which they did not in fact hold - that is effectively a conclusion of bad faith or some form of disreputable conduct.
113. I refer to the extracts from the original and AR decisions which I set out at in Section II above. It was being said that despite the Claimants having signed an application which stated an intention to run a business and to obtain LTR on that basis, the Secretary of State did not believe them. This was not because they were naïve or misguided in their business plans but because the Secretary of State did not believe they had their claimed intention to run the proposed businesses.
114. The common form of words used was: "The Secretary of State is not satisfied that you genuinely wish to establish in business as proposed". In one case (Yildiz), the Secretary of State used not only these words but spelt out in terms what they in any event implied by adding: "Therefore based on the information provided I believe this application is an attempt to secure leave rather than a genuine intent to establish in business". In my judgment, that was also in effect being said to each of the other Claimants.
115. Despite the use of the common wording, Leading Counsel for the Secretary of State forcefully argued that in fact the applications were not dismissed for any claimed bad faith or belief of dishonesty but simply on the merits under paragraph 21 of HC210. She contended that there was no need for this wording and drew a contrast between applications refused under paragraph 4 (where some form of disreputable conduct would be necessary) and those refused under paragraph 21.
116. I cannot accept this. I consider the wording to be highly significant. The approach of the caseworker to the evidence in an application which he or she considers is in reality an attempt to obtain LTR for a different purpose to that claimed will be different to that applied by a caseworker who concludes that, for innocent reasons, the application does not put forward a realistic business plan. It was not being said to these Claimants that they were simply naïve or deluded in their views as to the potential for their businesses.
117. Leading Counsel for the Secretary of State candidly accepted that the wording I have identified was in her language "unfortunate" and might imply wrongdoing but she argued that it was the result of the Guidance which specified that such language was to be used in simple rejection cases where the requirements of paragraph 21 were not satisfied.
118. I will return to that point in due course (para. [121] below), but for present purposes it is in my judgment not possible to understand words which say that an applicant has not shown he or she has a "genuine wish or intention" to run a business as suggesting anything other than that in this context it effectively means a knowingly false basis for obtaining LTR.
[…]
121. As indicated above, Leading Counsel for the Secretary of State submitted that the unfortunate use of language (which she properly and fairly accepted implied wrongdoing) was due to the instructions to caseworkers in the Guidance. Those instructions do, as she correctly submitted, direct caseworkers to use this language when in fact the reasons for refusal may be based on innocent failure to put forward a plan with a realistic chance of success. I have set those directions out above at para. [67] and will not repeat them again.
122. It does seem to be the case that (as Leading Counsel for the Secretary of State submitted) inappropriate labels are directed to be attached when applications are rejected without any suggestion of fault or bad faith on the part of the applicant. This is however not an answer to the complaint.
19. In conclusion, it was held that:
126. The rejection of the applications on this basis was reached without affording the Claimants a fair process at common law in that: (a) the original decision of the Secretary of State was made without giving the Claimants the opportunity to address such a serious allegation; and (b) as was common ground before me, the system of AR expressly prevented the Claimants from submitting any additional evidence to the reviewer in answering this allegation.
20. The error was material and the decisions were quashed. While the majority of Judge’s analysis was conducted in relation to Mrs Karagul’s case, it was held to apply to the other claimants. That included Mr Izci, whose refusal decision and subsequent Administrative Review decision had only contained the language, “The Secretary of State is not satisfied that you genuinely wish to establish in business as proposed”.
Consideration
21. I shall not set out the detailed and helpful arguments made on the parties’ behalf save where necessary to explain my conclusions, nor the other authorities to which I was taken, but have carefully taken it all into account.
22. The claimants’ position in Karagul bears considerable resemblance to that of Mrs Sanci. In both cases, since the decision the Secretary of State has disavowed any positive allegation of dishonesty or other wrongdoing, instead asserting that the applications were refused because a burden lay on the applicant to prove that they met a requirement of the rules and the decision-maker considered that the relied-upon evidence was insufficient to discharge that burden. I accept that such a distinction in administrative decision-making, between dishonesty on the one hand and a failure to prove a fact in issue on the other, is both familiar and logically coherent. Insofar as the submissions made on behalf of Mrs Sanci sought to paint the rejection of an assertion as always amounting to an accusation of dishonesty, they went too far.
23. Mrs Sanci was also, like the four claimants in Karagul, refused by reference to genuineness. The common wording in Karagul, as set out at [112], was that the Secretary of State is not satisfied “that you genuinely wish to establish in business as proposed”, here it was “that you are genuinely seeking entry to stay for a purpose that is permitted under the visitor route”. Mr Ostrowski sought in a number of ways to distinguish Mrs Sanci’s decision on its face, but such differences as exist are irrelevant factual details. I consider that the reasoning of Saini J as to the plain meaning of the decision applies equally in the present case, and in any event I agree with it.
24. The only distinction with potential purchase is that the word ‘genuine’ bears a different meaning in decisions applying Appendix Visitor, because it provides an express definition of the term. This is, adding my own emphasis:
V 4.2. The applicant must satisfy the decision maker that they are a genuine visitor, which means the applicant:
(a) will leave the UK at the end of their visit; and
(b) will not live in the UK for extended periods through frequent or successive visits, or make the UK their main home; and
(c) is genuinely seeking entry or stay for a purpose that is permitted under the Visitor route as set out in Appendix Visitor: Permitted Activities and at V 13.3;
25. In my exchanges with Mr Ostrowski, two ways were identified in which an entirely honest person might not be a “genuine visitor”. First, under V 4.2.(a) someone might express an intention to leave the UK at the end of their visit that is subjectively well founded, but that the decision maker considers objectively unrealistic. For example, someone may be ill but nevertheless genuinely expect to return after their visit, only for the decision-maker to reach a less optimistic yet rational conclusion that they will be unlikely to do so. I accept that such a person would not be a ‘genuine visitor’ under the rules without any conclusion being reached that they are dishonest. The lack of any such conclusion would nonetheless be clear from the actual reasoning on the face of the decision. The second example arises under (b), which requires an evaluation by the decision-maker as to what counts as ‘frequent’, ‘successive’ or the UK being a ‘main home’. The applicant may genuinely consider that their visits fall the right side of the line, the decision-maker may rationally disagree; the result is that the applicant is not a genuine visitor. Again, the reasoning of such a conclusion would be sufficient to explain to the reader that there was no suggestion of dishonesty.
26. I am unable to reach such a conclusion in relation to (c). This requires that ‘a genuine visitor’ be ‘genuinely seeking entry’ for a particular purpose. There is no bespoke definition left to which ‘genuinely’ in (c) can refer, so all that is left is its ordinary meaning as discussed in Karagul. Just as the Secretary of State told Mr Izci that she was “not satisfied that you genuinely wish to establish in business as proposed”, in the present case she told Mrs Sanci that she was “not satisfied … that you are genuinely seeking entry to stay for a purpose that is permitted under the visitor route.” The meaning of that reasoning, in the context of the decision as a whole, was likewise that the decision had been reached because the claimed purpose of the visit was knowingly false.
27. Insofar as it was argued that this interpretation of the word ‘genuine’ in V 4.2(c) would cause difficulties in decision-making, this was unsubstantiated and provides no basis for taking the word as somehow meaning other than it was held to do in Karagul or contrary to its sensible and ordinary meaning: Mahad v Entry Clearance Officer [2009] UKSC 16 at [10]. As observed by Mr Burrett, it was the Secretary of State who chose to place the concept of genuineness at the heart of Appendix V. I would add that she has done so, as already noted above, by selecting the ordinary word genuine as one of three alternative definitions of ‘genuine’ under V 2.4: (a) whether someone will leave the UK at the end of their visit; (b) whether they will live in the UK for extended or frequent periods, or making it their main home; or (c) are genuinely applying on the basis set out in the rules. V 2.4 (a) and (b) still provide two bases upon which an application can be refused in a suitable case, without any need to invoke (c).
28. I was also referred to the decision not expressly recording that the rules’ provisions on dishonesty were engaged such that future applications would be refused for a period of ten years, as had been done in Kaur. I What the decision does not say cannot alter the meaning of what it does say. In any event, according to the operation of the rules the formal decision on whether there is a so-called re-entry ban arising from deception is actually taken upon deciding whether to refuse a future application for that reason..
Other arguments
29. First, it was argued that the application was also refused under V 4.2(a) and that any error in relation to (c) was therefore immaterial. I reject this. While (a) is cited in the final sentence, this clearly relied on the reasoning under (c).
30. Second, the Secretary of State also raised an argument expressed as follows in her Detailed Grounds of Defence:
22. Furthermore, and in any event, even if the SSHD should have given the Applicant an opportunity to address the concerns raised in the decision letter (by, for instance, serving a 'minded-to' letter), it is highly likely that the outcome for the Applicant would not have been substantially different in the circumstances given the issues identified in the refusal letter because it is difficult to see how the Applicant could have responded to a ‘minded-to’ letter in such a way as to change the conclusion that she would not leave at the end of her visit and/or was not seeking entry as a visitor given her economic situation. Pursuant to s.31(2A) Senior Courts Act 1981 and s.15 Tribunal, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007, relief should be refused.
31. I note the caution expressed in Plan B Earth v Secretary of State for Transport [2020] EWCA Civ 214 at [273], the judgment of Lewis LJ in R (Bradbury) v Brecon Beacons National Park Authority [2025] EWCA Civ 489 at [74], and of Singh LJ in R (Hippolyte) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 1493 at [74]. In this case I am asked to either find that the only rational conclusion that could ever be reached is Mrs Sanci is dishonest, or that her application would be refused in any event under (a). I am not provided with the explanation contemplated in Hippolyte at [74]. In a future application, the evaluation required under either limb of the rule is for the Secretary of State to conduct, not the Upper Tribunal. So far as necessary, I furthermore reject that Mrs Sanci’s circumstances are so incompatible with the requirements of V 4.2 that she could never rationally be granted entry clearance.
32. More faintly put was reliance on the fact that similar concerns had been expressed in a previous refusal of 3 January 2025 and that Mrs Sanci's solicitors had addressed those matters in pre-action correspondence before the Decision was taken. I do not accept that this provided fair notice of the allegation ultimately relied upon. The question is not whether Mrs Sanci knew that the Secretary of State doubted that she met Appendix V. It is whether she was told that the Secretary of State was minded to conclude that her claimed purpose of entry was not genuine and given an opportunity to address that specific concern before a final decision was made. She has in any event not been given the opportunity to address a specific concern of dishonesty when the Secretary of State has disavowed such a conclusion.
33. I need not address Ground 2.
Conclusion
34. The Secretary of State’s decision was reached in material breach of the common law duty described in Balajigari and summarised by Saini J in Karagul at [103] and must be quashed.
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