Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2024-004928
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/50273/2024
LP/03721/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

3rd August 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE KAMARA

Between

OL
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

Secretary of State for the Home Department
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr J Collins, counsel instructed by Sentinel Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms S Lecointe, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 22 July 2026

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
Introduction
1. The appellant has been granted permission to appeal the decision of the First-tier Tribunal dismissing her appeal following a hearing which took place on 27 August 2024.
Anonymity
2. I have continued the anonymity order made by the First-Tier Tribunal. I have considered the public interest in open justice but conclude that it is outweighed by the importance of facilitating the discharge of the United Kingdom’s obligations to those claiming international protection because of the need for confidentiality.
Factual Background
3. The appellant is a national of Albania now aged thirty-six. She entered the United Kingdom in 2018 accompanied by her two children who are now aged eight and five. Her former partner and the father of the children is pursuing an asylum claim in the United Kingdom. The appellant has since had another child with her former partner.
4. The appellant’s asylum claim is based on her fear that she will be re-trafficked for sexual exploitation because her partner failed to repay a loan, as well as her fear that her children would be harmed for the same reason. That claim was refused by way of a decision dated 7 November 2023. In that decision, the Secretary of State accepted that the appellant had been a victim of trafficking. The claim was refused as the respondent considered that there was a sufficiency of protection available from the Albanian authorities, applying TD and AD (Trafficked women) [2016] UKUT 00092 (IAC). it was also decided that the appellant would not be at risk of persecution owing to her individual circumstances which included that she is a mature woman, university educated and had a good relationship with her parents. Alternatively, it was considered that the appellant could relocate from Tirana where she previously lived. The claim was also refused in respect of Article 8 ECHR.
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal
5. Following the hearing before the First-tier Tribunal, the judge dismissed the appeal for similar reasons to those given by the respondent.
The appeal to the Upper Tribunal
6. The grounds of appeal made the following points:
i. Procedural unfairness, in that the judge had regard to matters which the appellant did not have an opportunity to address.
ii. A mistake of fact about the economic circumstances of the appellant’s family.
iii. That in considering whether there was a sufficiency of protection available to the appellant, there was a failure to address relevant evidence.
iv. The judge’s consideration of internal relocation was flawed for the foregoing reasons.
v. There was a failure to consider that the appellant had been trafficked previously, with reference to Paragraph 339K of the Rules.
vi. A failure to consider paragraph 339K of the Immigration Rules.
vii. There had been a failure to consider the concept of kurva, applying AM & BM (Trafficked women) Albania [2010] UKUT 80 (IAC) at [59].
viii. The approach to Article 8 was erroneous given the appellant was an accepted victim of trafficking.
7. On 11 November 2024, permission to appeal was granted on the basis sought, by Upper Tribunal Judge Jackson. The grant of permission making the following remarks.
Whilst not all of the grounds of appeal have arguable merit, I do not exclude any from the grant of permission given that the theme that runs through the decision and many of the grounds is in relation to findings as to the Appellant’s relationship with the father of her children and likely circumstances on return to Albania. It is arguable that there are insufficient reasons given for the finding that the Appellant is still in a genuine and subsisting relationship with her claimed ex partner, albeit the birth of a child is weighty evidence of an ongoing relationship, there was nothing else to suggest regular contact and they have not cohabited together in the United Kingdom; nor was the Appellant’s claim, which included their children as dependents, in any way supported by her claimed ex-partner despite them initially fleeing Albania and travelling together. In any event, it is arguable that the findings in relation to both risk on return and Article 8 are predicated on speculation that even if there remains a genuine and subsisting relationship, that the family would return to Albania together, despite the claim that the Appellant’s partner/ex-partner is also in the United Kingdom with a claim for asylum and there is arguably a lack of evidence that he would be willing or able to return to Albania. There is arguably a lack of consideration of the Appellant’s position if she were to return as a single mother of three young children, albeit the grounds as to her family’s means and possible support lack merit, as does the claim of failing to consider ‘kurva’ which does not appear to have been raised before the First-tier Tribunal.
Whilst it appears to have been accepted on behalf of the Appellant that the Article 8 claim stood or fell with the protection claim, it is further arguable that the First-tier Tribunal failed to consider the Appellant’s history of trafficking and prostitution in Albania as part of the Article 8 assessment.
The grounds raise a number of points as to procedural fairness and claims that certain matters were not put to the Appellant during the course of the hearing before the First-tier Tribunal. The Appellant requests a ‘listening appointment’ for these matters to be confirmed. However, in the first instance, given the Appellant was legally represented before the First-tier Tribunal, it would have been more appropriate for Ms Norman (who appeared for the Appellant at the hearing below) to have submitted a written statement and any notes from the hearing in support of the grounds alleged. It is possible that these matters could then be agreed with the Respondent such that listening to an entire hearing would not be necessary. Directions are given further below on this point.
8. The directions made by Judge Jackson are set out below:
1. If the Appellant maintains the procedural fairness grounds of appeal, her representative, Ms Norman, should file and serve a written statement together with any notes of the hearing dealing with these points (in accordance with BW (witness statements by advocates) Afghanistan [2014] UKUT 00568 (IAC)) no later than 21 days after this decision is sent to the parties.
2. The Respondent to confirm to the Upper Tribunal and the Appellant whether the contents of such statement/notes are agreed as to the procedural fairness allegations put, and if disputed, file and serve her own evidence from the Home Office Presenting Officer (Ms M Sarfo) no later than 21 days after receipt of the material from the Appellant in (1).
3. Only if the matters remain in dispute, the parties to liaise with the Upper Tribunal to make arrangements to listen to the First-tier Tribunal hearing record.
9. The respondent filed no Rule 24 response.
The error of law hearing
10. The matter comes before the Upper Tribunal to determine whether the decision contains an error of law and, if it is so concluded, to either re-make the decision or remit the appeal to the First-tier Tribunal to do so. A bundle was submitted by the appellant containing, inter alia, the core documents in the appeal, including the appellant’s and respondent’s bundles before the First-tier Tribunal.
11. The hearing was attended by representatives for both parties as above. Both representatives made submissions and the conclusions below reflect those arguments and submissions where necessary.
12. I should add that Mr Collins, having discussed the matter with counsel who represented the appellant before the First-tier Tribunal, no longer sought to rely on the procedural irregularity point made in the first ground. Nor did he wish to pursue the sixth ground.
Discussion
13. In the light of the guidance given by the Court of Appeal, including at paragraph [77] of KM [2021] EWCA Civ 693, I remind myself that judicial restraint should be exercised when examining the reasons given by a First-tier Tribunal judge for their decision and that it should not be assumed too readily that the judge misdirected themselves.
14. I also remind myself that the appellant has been accepted as a victim of trafficking for sexual exploitation. Her detailed witness statement dated 20 May 2024 sets out the extent of her harrowing ill-treatment as well as addresses issues raised by the respondent in the decision refusing her protection and human rights claim.
Ground (i)
15. The remaining issue under the first ground concerns the judge’s understanding that the appellant’s former partner would be willing and able to return to Albania and thus provide the appellant with support. That finding was made owing to the judge’s assumption that the appellant and her former partner had resumed their relationship, based on the birth of a further child in 2024. The difficulty with that assumption is that there was a lack of evidence before the judge in relation to the former partner. He played no part in the proceedings before the judge and there was no witness statement from him. Furthermore, there was no evidence before the judge as to the outcome or status of his outstanding asylum claim. This error is material owing to its effect on other conclusions reached by the judge.
Ground (ii)
16. The judge made findings regarding the economic means of the appellant’s family which were based more on speculation than the evidence before him. In the appellant’s witness statements, she says that her family were poor and that they were in receipt of benefits. The judge found, “I accept that her family are not a family of influence. But to reside in Tirana and send their daughter to university they had some economic means.” This finding does not fully reflect the appellant’s evidence. Ms Lecointe was unable to point to any evidence regarding how a university education could be funded in Albania. The difficulty with this error is that it feeds into the judge’s findings in relation to the amount of support likely to be available to the appellant.
Ground (iii)
17. In assessing future risk, the judge placed significant weight on the traffickers not having been able to locate her or her family since she escaped from them [19] and [23]. The difficulty with this conclusion is that in her witness statement, the appellant gave a detailed account of the traffickers having telephoned her family home within days of her escape as well as that her father had told them she was not there and that he had disowned her. That evidence was clearly relevant in that it showed that the traffickers had been able to quickly locate the appellant’s family. Furthermore, that evidence explains why there had been no personal visit by the traffickers in that it would have been pointless if the appellant had been disowned by her family and she was no longer living there.
Ground (v)
18. The foregoing errors mean that the judge’s approach to internal relocation is flawed. The finding that it was reasonable to expect the appellant to relocate away from Tirana where she last lived as well as from the north of Albania where she was from, was based on support being available from her parents, her former partner as well as his parents. As explained above those findings were arrived at on an erroneous basis. Owing to the judge finding that extensive family support was available to the appellant, there was no consideration of the reasonableness of relocation as a single mother of three children and the fact that she had never worked in Albania.
Ground (vii)
19. The Secretary of State’s response to the argument that there was no consideration by the judge of the concept of kurva is to say that the issue was not raised. The issue of kurva (a form of social exclusion of women) was discussed in AM & BM and was endorsed in TD and AD at [111]
We accept her evidence that women living on their own are immediately identifiable as being on the 'outside'; even if the details of their history are not known, work colleagues and neighbours may view them with some suspicion. In some cases that suspicion will escalate to open prejudice and hostility. We therefore find no reason to depart from the general conclusions on this matter drawn by the Tribunal in AM & BM. Women living on their own are likely to be socially distinct. Whilst discrimination and stigma certainly exist they will not generally constitute persecutory "serious harm" or breach Article 3, but this it nevertheless a factor to be considered cumulatively when assessing whether internal flight is reasonable for any given appellant.
20. It is apparent from the appellant’s skeleton argument which was before the First-tier Tribunal that the above extract from TD and AD was reproduced at paragraph 36 in relation to submissions on internal relocation. In addition, at paragraph 43, detailed submissions were made which argued that the appellant was “likely to be considered as kurva” and “outcast from society altogether.” I find that there is no indication that this issue was addressed and this amounts to a further error.
Ground (viii)
21. The judge dealt with the appellant’s Article 8 claim at [28] of the decision. In that consideration there was no reference to the fact that she was a recognised victim of trafficking.
22. Instead, the judge simply referred to his earlier negative findings in relation to the protection claim. In this the judge erred given the guidance given at headnote (c) of DC (trafficking: protection/human rights appeals) Albania [2019] UKUT 00351 (IAC)
In a human rights appeal, the question whether the appellant has been the victim of trafficking may be relevant to the issue of whether the appellant's removal would breach the ECHR, even where it is not asserted there is a trafficking-related risk of harm in the country of proposed return and irrespective of what is said in sub-paragraph (b) above: e.g. where the fact of trafficking may have caused the appellant physical or psychological harm. Here, as in sub-paragraph (a) above, the CA's decision on past trafficking will be part of the evidence to be assessed by the tribunal.
23. Given what is said in DC, the judge ought to have carried out a careful and more nuanced assessment notwithstanding that he found that the protection claim was not made out.
24. For the foregoing reasons, I conclude that the grounds considered above identify a series of errors in the decision of the First-tier Tribunal, which had a material impact on the outcome of the appeal.
25. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal is set aside with no preserved findings.
26. I canvassed the views of the parties as to the venue of any remaking and both were of the view that the matter ought to be remitted.
27. Applying Majera [2025] EWCA Civ 1597, I carefully considered whether to depart from the normal course of retaining the matter for remaking in the Upper Tribunal, in line with the general principles set out in Statements 3 and 7 of the Senior President’s Practice Statements, specifically at 3.1, 7.2 and 7.3. I took into consideration the history of this case, the nature and extent of the findings to be made as well as the fact that the nature of the errors of law in this case meant that there was an inadequate consideration of the appellant’s protection appeal. I further consider that it would be unfair for either party to be unable to avail themselves of the two-tier decision-making process and therefore remit the appeal to the First-tier Tribunal.
Notice of Decision
The making of the decision of the First-tier Tribunal did involve the making of an error on a point of law.
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal is set aside.
The appeal is remitted, de novo, to the First-tier Tribunal to be reheard by a different judge.

T Kamara

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

23 July 2026