Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2024-004642

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/59358/2023
LP/06814/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 10 October 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE NEVILLE

Between

MS
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr M Ul-Haq, counsel instructed by SH Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms S Simbi, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 6 January 2025

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellant is granted anonymity.

No-one shall publish or reveal any information, including the name or address of the appellant, likely to lead members of the public to identify the appellant. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS
1. The appellant is a national of Albania born in 1995. She entered the United Kingdom at some point in March 2020 and made a claim for protection soon afterwards. The claim was refused by the respondent on 20 October 2023, and her appeal against that decision was dismissed by the First-tier Tribunal (FtT). In the decision dismissing the appeal, the FtT summarised the basis of the appellant’s claim as follows:
11. The appellant says that when she was 18, in her first year of university, her father arranged for her to be married to ET. She says that in January 2015 she and ET fled to Germany because ET was escaping people to whom he owed money. ET applied for asylum on arrival.
12. About a month later the appellant became pregnant, and ET accused her of being unfaithful. This led to a deterioration in their relationship, and he began to mistreat her.
13. ET’s application was refused, and they returned to Albania in June 2016. At this point the relationship was over, and the appellant tried to move back with her parents. Her father refused and she ended up living on the streets.
14. The appellant says that at this point she met GH who offered to help her and her daughter, so she moved into his house. However, he later forced her to become a sex worker. She says that she escaped GH in April 2017 and went to live with ET.
15. ET then took her to France to again claim asylum, with her as a dependent on his application. This was refused and ET then left her and their daughter.
16. Whilst in France she says that she received threats from GH.
17. She returned to Albania in September 2019 to attend her father’s funeral before returning to France where she had left her daughter.
18. On her return to France she was introduced to an agent who agreed to smuggle her into the United Kingdom in return for sex. She says that she boarded a lorry on 18 March 2020 and spent her first night in the United Kingdom in a hotel before applying for asylum the next day.
19. During her time in the country she had a relationship with IL which resulted in the birth of two other daughters.
20. She says that she feared GH if returned to Albania. She also feared for her children’s future because the children of sex workers are stigmatised in Albania.
2. In the refusal decision, the respondent had concluded that the appellant did not qualify for refugee status, humanitarian protection, or leave to remain on family or private life grounds. The respondent decided that the appellant’s evidence was inconsistent and lacked credibility, noting contradictions in her account of the risks faced on return to Albania, the circumstances of her alleged exploitation, and her relationship history. The respondent further concluded that, even if the appellant’s account were accepted, she could avoid any risk on return by accessing sufficient protection the Albanian authorities and / or by relocating elsewhere in Albania, which would it would be reasonable to expect her to do. As to the appellant’s family and private life, she did not meet the relevant requirements of the Immigration Rules and nor would removal breach Article 8 ECHR.
3. Having heard evidence from the appellant, the FtT Judge reached the same overall conclusion as the respondent. It found that the appellant’s evidence was “flimsy, vague and unreliable” and rejected her account. The Judge also reached the same conclusion as the respondent on the availability of sufficient protection from the authorities and the reasonableness of internal relocation, finding that both men feared by the appellant had no reach beyond her home area. Finally, considering the right to respect for the appellant’s family and private life, taking the best interests of her children as a primary consideration, the FtT decided that the difficulties they would face on return “would not be sufficient to be classed as very significant obstacles”.
4. The subsequent appeal against the FtT’s decision can be distilled into four distinct grounds, asserting that the FtT failed: first, to take into account the appellant’s mental health problems when rejecting the credibility of her evidence, and given other flaws in assessing credibility this could be material; second, to reach rationally sustainable findings of fact on sufficiency of state protection in Albania; third, to apply the correct legal principles concerning internal relocation; and fourth, to apply the correct legal test to the appellant’s children’s circumstances on return. Permission was granted by a different judge of the FtT on all grounds, and the respondent subsequently provided a response under rule 24 supporting the FtT’s decision for the reasons it gave.
Ground 1 – vulnerability and credibility
Principles
5. Before anyone can rationally decide that an inconsistency or lack of detail is explained by them not telling the truth, any other possible explanations should be considered. This includes recognising any consequences arising from vulnerability, which includes mental health problems. The Joint Presidential Guidance Note No 2 of 2010 was issued following the Senior President of Tribunals’ Practice Direction: Child, vulnerable adult and sensitive witnesses. The Guidance includes detail on ways in which the FtT can ensure a person is able to give their best evidence. It also refers to way in which that evidence should then be assessed, including that:
3. The consequences of such vulnerability differ according to the degree to which an individual is affected. It is a matter for you to determine the extent of an identified vulnerability, the effect on the quality of the evidence and the weight to be placed on such vulnerability in assessing the evidence before you, taking into account the evidence as a whole.
6. The importance of ensuring best evidence and taking due account of vulnerability was made clear in AM (Afghanistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWCA Civ 1123:
27. It is accordingly beyond argument that the tribunal and the parties are required so far as is practicable to ensure that an appellant is able to participate fully in the proceedings and that there is a flexibility and a wide range of specialist expertise which the tribunal can utilise to deal with a case fairly and justly. …
7. At [30] it was held that failure to follow the Practice Direction and the Joint Presidential Guidance would most likely be an error of law. While that obligation falls on the Tribunal, and the Secretary of State is obliged to help the Tribunal achieve it, the Court nonetheless observed that:
32. … the primary responsibility for identifying vulnerabilities must rest with the appellant's representatives who are better placed than the Secretary of State's representatives to have access to private medical and personal information. Appellant's representatives should draw the tribunal's attention to the PD and Guidance and should make submissions about the appropriate directions and measures to be considered e.g. whether an appellant should give oral evidence or the special measures that are required to protect his welfare or make effective his access to justice. The SRA practice note of 2 July 2015 entitled 'Meeting the needs of vulnerable clients' sets out how solicitors should identify and communicate with vulnerable clients. …
8. Judges are also now expected to be aware of the guidance contained in the Equal Treatment Bench Book, which includes a section on adjustments for mental health problems in Chapter 4.
9. It is also well-recognised that victims of trafficking may present their account in a different way than might be assumed: see, for example, the statutory guidance on Modern Slavery.
10. Of course, none of this prescribes any particular outcome. The obligation is only to make such special arrangements as are necessary for the proceedings to be fair, in accordance with the overriding objective, and to take account of vulnerability when deciding issues of credibility. As held in SB (vulnerable adult: credibility) Ghana [2019] UKUT 398 (IAC):
60. … The fact that a judicial fact-finder decides to treat an appellant or witness as a vulnerable adult does not mean that any adverse credibility finding in respect of that person is thereby to be regarded as inherently problematic and thus open to challenge on appeal.
Consideration
11. The grounds assert a failure to follow the above principles, coupled with other flaws in assessing credibility. Mr Ul-Haq did not represent the appellant in the FtT, so regard must be had to the documents and the decision to determine what arguments and evidence was considered. There was no medical report before the Judge, nor was the issue of vulnerability raised in the Appeal Skeleton Argument. Nonetheless, the Judge was plainly aware of the appellant’s health problems. The Judge records in the decision that the appellant had previously received low intensity CBT sessions, being discharged in February 2021, is now prescribed sertraline by her GP, and had started further therapy about 10 days before the hearing.
12. After setting out various evidential points considered relevant, the Judge concluded his credibility assessment as follows:
33. Overall, I found the appellant’s evidence to be flimsy, vague and unreliable. Whilst I accept that she suffers from poor mental health I find that this is not so severe as to explain the extent of her inconsistencies. She is on 100mg of sertraline which is not the maximum normal dose. I have not been provided with any medical evidence to suggest that her memory is impaired or to otherwise convince me that special consideration should be taken of her mental health when assessing her evidence.
34. I find that across her various interviews, statements and oral evidence she has given different stories about her relationship with ET and the role of GH in her life.
35. When I consider the appellant’s written and oral evidence, alongside the interview transcripts and the further information provided between the interviews, I find that the appellant was not a credible witness.
13. The analysis at [33] is unsatisfactory in two respects. First, the Judge appears to assume that being prescribed a particular dosage of sertraline can reliably inform the effect of symptoms upon a person’s ability to recall and describe facts. For myself, I would instead assume that a particular dosage is prescribed based on the individual’s response and sensitivity to the medication; moreover, a clinician may have other benchmarks for improvement than the ability to give reliable testimony. The point is, of course, that neither myself nor the Judge come to court as medical experts, and without medical evidence should not rely on such lay assumptions.
14. Second, there is no requirement for medical evidence to show that depression, anxiety and stress can affect a person’s evidence. As described in the Equal Treatment Bench Book:
Mental health disorders cover a broad spectrum of conditions such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, eating disorder, bipolar disorder (which used to be known as manic depression) and schizophrenia. People diagnosed as having mental health problems may have feelings or behave in ways which are distressing to themselves or others. They may have hallucinations (especially visual or auditory), delusions and thought disorders.
[…]
Most mental health problems are likely to have an effect on giving evidence as a witness in a court or tribunal. Because of the variety of patterns of behaviour, and their impact on the veracity of the evidence, this is a situation where the judge needs to make a particularly careful assessment of the individual and how best to deal with them in giving evidence. Many people with mental health problems are reliant on a caring and stable environment for maintaining their stability and can easily be thrown off balance by medication changes or sudden distressing experiences. Their medication may lead to embarrassing side-effects (eg sweating or tics).
15. The appellant’s mental ill health was certainly at the less severe end of the spectrum so described, and the ETBB does go on to say that the impact of ill health on function may be separate from its impact on credibility and reliability of evidence. I nonetheless cannot see that the reasons given by the Judge for discounting it entirely, both in terms of adjustments and as affecting credibility, were rationally open to him.
16. Ms Simbi observed that no specific adjustments or credibility considerations had been put forward as likely to have made any difference, and the Judge’s approach at [33] does not undermine the various inconsistencies upon which he relied elsewhere. I agree that if the Judge had, instead, simply recorded that due allowance had been made for the potential effect of the appellant’s mental ill health, he could have rationally gone on to find that her credibility should still be rejected. But the Judge instead relied on his own purported clinical knowledge and the lack of a medical report, and it cannot be said that in the absence of those errors a negative outcome was inevitable. The findings on credibility must therefore be set aside.
Ground 3 – Internal relocation
17. I move to Ground 3 as it can be readily decided and is determinative of the appeal. The FtT’s decision was reached on the basis that sufficiency of protection and internal relocation would be available to the appellant even if her account were accepted. The Judge’s treatment of internal relocation was as follows:
44. Whilst it is acknowledged that single mother will face stigma and some discrimination in Albania, the respondent points to the CPINs which show that there are a number of shelters and charities operating in Albania which provide immediate and long-term support to women in the appellant’s position. I find that there would be support available for the appellant in terms of housing, vocational training, and financial support. As such she could relocate internally on a practical level.
45. The appellant has not provided any evidence that ET or GH have a reach beyond their home area and as such I see no reason why internal relocation would not keep her safe, even if I am wrong to refuse the protection claim above.
18. I reject the submission that the Judge erred by failing to apply the relevant legal principles concerning internal relocation, conveniently summarised by the Supreme Court in SC (Jamaica) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] UKSC 15 at [53]-[62]. As confirmed in the Practice Direction from the Senior President of Tribunals: Reasons for decisions:
9. As an expert tribunal, the First-tier Tribunal will generally be taken to be aware of the relevant authorities within the jurisdiction being exercised, and to be applying those cases without the need to refer to them specifically, unless it is clear from the language of the decision that they have failed to do so. The Upper Tribunal will not readily assume that a tribunal has misdirected itself merely because every step in its reasoning is not fully set out in its decision. Thus, a challenge based on the adequacy of reasons should only succeed when the appellate body cannot understand the Tribunal’s thought process in making material findings.
19. Nothing in the Judge’s treatment of the issue suggests that he did not apply the correct legal principles.
20. I do accept, however, the second argument made under this ground. The Judge rested his conclusion on ‘the CPINs’, which must mean (at the time of the hearing) the December 2022 Country Policy and Information Notes on actors of protection and domestic violence against women, and the July 2024 CPIN on trafficking. Positive arguments had been made on behalf of the appellant that other country evidence, which had been supplied, should lead to the contrary result, and furthermore that the CPINs did not support the conclusion that the Judge gave them. Given the importance of this issue, it was incumbent on the Judge to acknowledge those submissions and explain, however concisely, why he disagreed with them.
Conclusion
21. I need not consider the other grounds, as both the adverse credibility findings and the alternative conclusions on internal relocation must be set aside. The representatives confirmed at the hearing that in those circumstances the decision should be set aside in its entirety and the matter remitted to the FtT for re-hearing. I agree: in accordance with the Practice Direction, the extent of further fact-finding required and the lack of any fair first-instance hearing of the appeal means that the appeal should be remitted for complete re-hearing.
22. The harm that might result if the appellant is identified, together with the importance of anonymity as supporting the integrity of the UK asylum system, justifies derogation from the principle of open justice. I therefore order anonymity in the form set out above.
Notice of Decision
(i) The decision of the First-tier Tribunal involved the making of an error of law and is set aside.
(ii) The case is remitted to the First-tier Tribunal for re-hearing with no facts preserved, to be heard by a different judge.

J Neville

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

10 October 2025