Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2024-005063

First-tier Tribunal No: HU/50743/2022; IA/01181/2022

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 2 June 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE SMITH

Between

MD RAJIB HOSSAIN
(NO ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr P Lewis, Counsel instructed by Zyba Law
For the Respondent: Mr T Lindsay, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on Thursday 29 May 2025

DECISION AND REASONS

BACKGROUND

1. The Appellant appeals against the decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Hanley promulgated on 16 July 2024 (“the Decision”) dismissing the Appellant’s appeal against the Respondent’s decision dated 21 December 2021, supplemented by a letter dated 21 January 2022 refusing the Appellant’s human rights claim made in the context of an application for a visit visa. Although that was the application made, it is not disputed by the Appellant that his intention was not to visit the UK but to remain here. He claims to be entitled to do so by reason of his private life established during a period of stay between 2009 and 2016. He claims that a refusal to allow him to resume that private life would be a disproportionate interference with his Article 8 rights.

2. The Appellant is a national of Bangladesh. He came to the UK on 27 February 2009 as a student with leave. His leave was curtailed by letter dated 28 January 2016 on the basis that he had used a proxy test-taker when taking an English language (TOEIC) test at London College of Social Studies (“LCSS”) in May 2012.

3. At the time of the 2016 decision, the Appellant’s wife was also in the UK. She was a points-based system (post-study work) migrant. They married on 27 January 2012 and the Appellant’s last period of leave was as her dependent. They have a son born in the UK on 1 March 2012.

4. The Appellant did not challenge the Respondent’s decision of 28 January 2016 at that time. Instead, he made a voluntary departure on 24 February 2016 along with his wife and son. The couple have a further child born in Bangladesh. The Appellant is now a student in Finland. The Appellant took no action to challenge the January 2016 decision until his application for a visit visa made on 14 October 2021 which, as noted above, was a vehicle to re-entering the UK to resume his private life and to remain here.

5. Judge Hanley found that the Applicant could not meet the Immigration Rules (“the Rules”) as a visitor, understandably given that the Appellant had no intention of leaving the UK if permitted to enter. He also found that the Appellant could not meet the Rules based on his private life. He found that the Appellant had not shown that there were any significant obstacles to integration in Bangladesh to where the Appellant had returned voluntarily and where his wife and children continue to live. Those findings are understandably not challenged by the Appellant.

6. Judge Hanley thereafter considered the Appellant’s claim outside the Rules. He found that the Appellant had indeed cheated in his TOEIC test. He also found that the Appellant’s Article 8 rights were not engaged. Having so concluded, he dismissed the appeal.

7. The Appellant appeals on four grounds summarised as follows:

Ground 1: the Judge misdirected himself in law when considering whether Article 8 was engaged based on the Appellant’s private life.
Ground 2: the Judge failed to consider the guidance in Majumder v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] EWCA Civ 1167 (“Majumder”) when making his finding about the allegation of cheating in the Appellant’s TOEIC test.
Ground 3: the Judge irrationally relied on the lack of corroborative oral evidence when making the finding that the Appellant had cheated in his TOEIC test.
Ground 4: the Judge’s finding was tainted by procedural unfairness or irrational reliance on the lack of documentary evidence.
Ground 5: the Judge misdirected himself in law as to the relevance of the failure to challenge the curtailment decision earlier.

8. Permission to appeal was granted by First-tier Tribunal Judge O’Keeffe on 23 October 2024 in the following terms so far as relevant:

“..3. It is arguable that the Judge misapplied the decision of the Court of Appeal in Ali v Upper Tribunal [2024] EWCA Civ 372 by distinguishing the quality of this appellant’s previous private life in the UK from that of the appellant in Ali. The grounds disclose an arguable material error of law and permission to appeal is granted on all grounds.”

9. The appeal comes before me to decide whether there is an error of law. If I determine that the Decision does contain an error of law, I then need to decide whether to set aside the Decision in consequence. If I set the Decision aside, I must then either re-make the decision or remit the appeal to the First-tier Tribunal to do so.

10. I had before me a bundle running to 512 pages containing the documents relevant to the appeal before me, and the Appellant’s and Respondent’s bundles before the First-tier Tribunal. I refer to documents in the bundle as [B/xx]. In addition, I had a bundle of authorities helpfully provided by the Appellant. Mr Lewis provided a replacement skeleton argument for the error of law hearing. I also drew the parties’ attention to the skeleton argument of Mr Biggs of Counsel on which the Appellant had relied below (being in person at that hearing) and which I considered might be relevant to the way in which the Judge had determined the appeal.

11. The Respondent filed a Rule 24 reply on 28 January 2025 which I have also taken into account in reaching my decision. At the outset of the hearing, Mr Lindsay raised an additional point which was not previously raised in the Rule 24 reply concerning the Tribunal’s jurisdiction to consider the appeal. He accepted that in this case the issue of jurisdiction had been determined by Mr Justice Chamberlain in the context of a judicial review challenge to the Respondent’s failure to provide a right of appeal (referred to at [§2] and [§18(e)] of the Decision). He accepted that it was not open to me to go behind that judgment but wished to reserve the Respondent’s position as to the correctness of the judgment that there was a right of appeal should the matter go further.

12. Following submissions from Mr Lewis and Mr Lindsay, I reserved my decision and indicated that I would provide that in writing which I now turn to do.

DISCUSSION

Ground 1

13. The Appellant places heavy reliance under this heading on the Court of Appeal’s judgment in Ali v Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) and Secretary of State for the Home Department [2024] EWCA Civ 372 (“Ali”).

14. Since it is asserted that the Judge erred by misdirecting himself in accordance with that judgment, it is necessary first to say something about that judgment. The Court of Appeal was taken by the Respondent in Ali to the case of Abbas v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWCA Civ 1393 (“Abbas”) in which the Court had held that Article 8 ECHR is not engaged in out of country entry clearance cases, at least so far as visitor appeals are concerned. I pause to observe that although this appeal is on its face an appeal against the refusal of a visit visa, as I have already noted, that is not in fact the basis on which the Appellant seeks to enter.

15. In Ali, the Court of Appeal was considering the case of a previously settled migrant who, through no fault of his own, was unable to re-enter the UK as a returning resident because he had lost his travel document. He was then refused entry clearance because the entry clearance officer (wrongly) refused to accept that the appellant had indefinite leave to remain (ILR) and he was unable to prove that he did because he had lost his travel document. In addition to having held ILR before he travelled outside the UK, the appellant in that case had all his family members living and settled in the UK. Having reviewed authorities from the Strasbourg court, the Court of Appeal held that Abbas was distinguishable from the Ali case and that Article 8 was engaged. The Tribunal had been wrong to hold that it was not. Ali was a “Cart” challenge and so the Court did not go so far as to determine the appeal, remitting it instead to the Upper Tribunal with permission to appeal to resolve the issue of proportionality of the refusal of entry clearance.

16. The key reasoning of the Court distinguishing the position of Mr Ali from the appellant in Abbas is to be found at [§41] to [§43] of the judgment which I set out because it is relevant to the issues raised by the Appellant’s first ground in this case:

“41. The key words in Abbas are ‘oblige’ and ‘require’ (which need no further elaboration), and ‘develop’ which was here being used in the sense of ‘start to exist, experience or possess’ (this is put beyond doubt by the discussion of Singh at paragraph 15, in which Burnett LJ said that the adults in that case ‘had developed’ a family and private life in the UK). The principle in Abbas applies to a situation in which a foreign national with no, or no sufficient ties to the UK, is seeking to enter in order to develop a private life in the UK in the future, which was the situation which this Court was there specifically addressing. Otherwise, anybody could turn up at the border and demand entry to the UK, and as Burnett LJ rightly pointed out, that is completely antithetical to the right of immigration control.
42. However, the Court in Abbas was not addressing the markedly different situation in which, as here, a settled migrant (indeed, an accepted refugee) has been denied re-entry after a period of temporary absence that the Immigration Rules both envisaged and permitted, because, through no fault of his own, he is no longer in possession of the travel document which proved his immigration status (and the Secretary of State wrongly (as is now accepted) refused to accept that he had that status).
43. The appellant was not seeking entry to ‘develop’ a private life in the sense used in Abbas, but rather to resume or continue a long-established private life within the UK which had been curtailed for reasons beyond his control. He was a settled migrant with indefinite leave to remain. It was that pre-existing private life within the jurisdiction that provided the jurisdictional ‘peg’ for the purposes of Article 1. Recognition of the fact that such an individual’s private life in the UK is engaged and that the decision to refuse them entry must be proportionate would not involve any extension of the ambit of Article 8, let alone an extension that would drive a coach and horses though the UK’s right of immigration control and lead to numerous applications for entry clearance.”
[my emphasis]

17. The Court of Appeal there dealt also with the issue of the territorial reach of the ECHR. As I understood Mr Lewis to accept, the Court’s reasoning overlaps the issue of engagement of Article 8 with the territorial reach of the Convention. In essence, there is a “jurisdictional ‘peg’” which arises from the private life already developed in the UK in the same way as that exists in family life cases where one or more family members are within the territory of the UK (or ECHR).

18. Mr Lindsay drew attention in his submissions to the reference at [§41] of the judgment to “no, or no sufficient ties to the UK” and to Mr Ali’s status in the UK as well as to the factors raised within the Court’s reasoning in those paragraphs.

19. The Appellant’s complaint in his first ground is that the Judge at [§69] and [§70] of the Decision, when considering whether Article 8 was engaged, had taken into account factors which were relevant only to proportionality. Those are said to be:

(1) Whether the Appellant suffered a historical injustice by reason of the ETS decision ([§69(b) – (g)] and [§69(j)];
(2) The Appellant’s absence from the UK and private life established in Bangladesh ([§69(h) and (i)];
(3) That the Appellant’s private life “was certainly far more tenuous than that which existed in Ali, a settled migrant” ([§70]).

20. I can deal with the third factor quite shortly. As is accepted in the Appellant’s replacement skeleton argument, at [§59] of the judgment in Ali, the Court declined to consider the position of someone like the Appellant who has and had no settled status in the UK. That together with the reference to “no sufficient ties” at [§41] of the judgment in Ali supports the Judge’s reliance on the Appellant’s status (and therefore the extent of his private life in the UK) as being relevant to whether Article 8 was engaged.

21. Mr Lewis placed strong reliance on [§47] of the judgment in Ali which makes reference to the decision of the ECtHR in Khan v United Kingdom (2014) 58 EHRR SE 15. As Mr Lewis pointed out, that case concerned a student whose leave was cancelled on national security grounds whilst he was outside the UK. Although the Strasbourg court found the complaint under Article 8 to be manifestly unfounded (a fact on which Mr Lindsay placed some reliance), it did so on the basis that the decision to exclude Mr Khan was proportionate. As the Court of Appeal pointed out in Ali and Mr Lewis emphasised, one does not reach the stage of a proportionality assessment unless Article 8 is engaged.

22. I accept Mr Lindsay’s submission that the facts of that case are not clear, and I have been unable to find a copy of that decision although an internet search reveals a decision which suggests – as the Court of Appeal in Ali appears to note – that the complaints under Articles 2, 3 and 6 were declared inadmissible based on Article 1. It is therefore difficult to know what factors were relied upon in relation to Mr Khan’s private life which led the Strasbourg court to accept that the Article 8 complaint was not inadmissible for that reason. I am therefore unable to accept that this provides any strong support for the Appellant’s case, particularly in light of what is said by the Court of Appeal at [§59] of the judgment in Ali where it declined to consider “the position of an individual whose private life within the UK is of a more tenuous nature”.

23. As to the first factor (historical injustice), as Mr Lewis accepted, the skeleton argument of Mr Biggs relied upon by the Appellant in this case before Judge Hanley did suggest that the historical injustice issue was relevant to the engagement of Article 8 (see [§17] to [§18] of that skeleton argument). However, as Mr Lewis pointed out, Mr Biggs did not have the benefit of the judgment in Ali whereas Judge Hanley did (the judgment post-dates the skeleton argument). Mr Lewis submitted that the judgment in Ali did not support reliance on this factor as relevant to whether Article 8 was engaged and that it only becomes relevant at the stage of a proportionality assessment.

24. I do not accept Mr Lewis’ submission that this factor was irrelevant. I have already set out [§41] to [§43] of the judgment in Ali above. Reference is made at both [§42] and [§43] to the appellant’s exclusion in that case being through no fault of his own or for reasons which he could not control. That was a factor which the Court of Appeal took into account when considering whether the appellant had a private life which was capable of engaging Article 8. It is also worthy of note that at [§47] of the judgment, the Court of Appeal relied upon the actions of the state, including by the cancellation of leave whilst an individual is within the territory of that state as being relevant to the territoriality issue under Article 1 ECHR. As I have already observed, and I understood the parties to accept, the Court of Appeal’s judgment appears to overlap the question of territorial jurisdiction and engagement of Article 8 and therefore this reference tends to support Judge Hanley’s reliance on historical injustice as being a relevant factor.

25. The Court of Appeal also took into account in Ali that the appellant’s absence was of a temporary nature (at [§42] of the judgment). Whilst I accept that the question whether the Appellant’s private life is engaged by his prior residence in the UK does not involve a comparison of his private life here with that formed in Bangladesh (save in the proportionality assessment) the strength of his private life in the UK is certainly relevant to whether that prior private life engages Article 8. It was therefore relevant for the Judge to take into account that the Appellant had disrupted his private life in the UK of his own accord (by making a voluntary departure) and had lived outside the UK for a number of years in Bangladesh before seeking to return to resume that private life.

26. Mr Lewis also drew my attention to a judgment of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission in H6 v Secretary of State for the Home Department (SC/205/2023) in support of the Appellant’s case that Article 8 might be engaged where a person does not live in the UK but forms a private life here which is capable of engaging Article 8. However, the facts of that case are very different from the instant case. In that case, although the appellant came to the UK initially as a student, he had thereafter formed a company in the UK and “divided his life” between the UK and China. He had also been granted ILR. In those circumstances, it is perhaps unsurprising that SIAC declined to distinguish Ali on the facts of the case ([§237] to [§241] of the judgment). The facts in that case as relied upon at [§241] of the judgment are very different from the present.

27. I also derived no assistance from the unreported judgment of Upper Tribunal Judge Blundell in R (on the application of Muhammad Arsalan Pasha) v Entry Clearance Officer, Abu Dhabi (JR-2024-LON-000074) although I did give Mr Lewis permission to rely on it. Although I accept that Judge Blundell was considering a case which is very similar on its facts to the instant case, he was doing so in the context of whether the Secretary of State had made a decision which gave rise to a right of appeal which required consideration whether the applicant in that case had made a human rights claim. In other words, Judge Blundell was making the decision in that case which Mr Justice Chamberlain made in this case. Although Judge Blundell accepted based on the judgment in Ali that the applicant was not prevented from relying on Article 8 rights just because he was outside the UK, distinguishing the judgment in Abbas, he expressly declined to decide the question whether the applicant’s Article 8 rights were in fact engaged which was first a matter for the respondent to decide and if refused, for the First-tier Tribunal on appeal. I also observe that at the end of his judgment, Judge Blundell suggested that if the respondent were concerned that the applicant’s claim was so unmeritorious as to be undeserving of an appeal, her remedy was to certify the claim as clearly unfounded.

28. The ECtHR’s judgment in Lazoriva v Ukraine (Application no. 6878/14) might at first blush appear to be more supportive of the Appellant’s case. However, the facts and context are very different. The applicant in that case was seeking to become her nephew’s legal guardian, having already obtained guardianship of her niece (her nephew’s sister) some time previously. The applicant was for those reasons opposing the adoption of her nephew by non-family members. The proceedings were issued on the basis that the proposed adoption interfered with the applicant’s Article 8 rights because it prevented her applying to become her nephew’s legal guardian. Although the connection with her nephew was found by the Strasbourg court not to engage the applicant’s family life, the court accepted that there was interference with the applicant’s private life based on the factors set out at [§66] of the judgment. Those factors have no application to the present case.

29. In any event, even if Judge Hanley was wrong to rely upon the factors he did when finding that Article 8 was not engaged, those would still be relevant to the proportionality assessment in Article 8(2). None of those factors favours the Appellant. Either they reduce the weight to be given to the Appellant’s private life (because for example he had lived most of his life in Bangladesh where his family continue to reside, and had made a voluntary departure there some eight or nine years ago) or they strengthen the public interest (on the basis of the Appellant’s cheating in his TOEIC case). The outcome of the appeal would therefore be the same if one reached the stage of a proportionality assessment. On that basis, it would not be appropriate for this Tribunal to set aside the Decision for re-making as the same conclusion would follow (depending of course on the Tribunal’s view of the remaining grounds in relation to the TOEIC test).

30. Mr Lindsay submitted that this was indeed the case, taking into account also the public interest in the certainty and finality of litigation (in relation to the challenge to the 2016 decision which the Appellant could have challenged at that time but did not), the floodgates argument (recognised by the Court of Appeal at [§41] of the judgment in Ali) and that the Appellant’s private life would be given little weight due to his precarious status (under section 117B of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002).

31. Although Mr Lewis initially sought to persuade me that this did not follow, I understood him eventually to accept that none of the factors relied upon by the Judge at [§69] and [§70] of the judgment could avail the Appellant if the allegation of cheating in his TOEIC test were made out. However, as he submitted and I accept, it is important for the Appellant to have a lawful assessment of the TOEIC allegation as the Judge’s findings in that regard would impact on any future applications which the Appellant might make. That therefore leads me on to the remaining grounds which challenge the Decision in relation to the findings on the TOEIC allegation.

Grounds 2 to 5

32. Although the Appellant challenges the Decision in relation to the allegation of cheating on four bases, it is convenient to take these grounds together.

33. The Judge directed himself at [§47] of the Decision to this Tribunal’s guidance in DK & RK (ETS: SSHD evidence; proof) India [2022] UKUT 00112 (IAC) (“DK & RK”) which found the Secretary of State’s evidence in “ETS cases” to be “amply sufficient to discharge the burden of proof”. Judge Hanley also took into account the Tribunal’s more recent decision in Varkey & Joseph (ETS – Hidden rooms) [2024] UKUT 00142 (IAC) (“Varkey”) ([§73] of the Decision).

34. The Appellant places reliance on Majumder as showing that the Judge failed to take into account a relevant factor, namely the Appellant’s academic achievements and ability to speak English when obtaining his qualifications in the UK. Reliance was placed on the Appellant’s witness statement at [B/34] ([§18]) where the Appellant says that he had no reason to cheat because he had a good level of English and had obtained an English language qualification at a higher level before coming to the UK. Reference was also made to the Appellant’s academic achievements at [B/45-46]. However, the Judge did take into account what the Appellant said about his English language proficiency at [§69(j)] where the Judge said this:

“The appellant has not actually produced any evidence beyond his assertions that he sat the test. He is adamant in his witness statement that he sat the test. That account was repeated in oral evidence. He points to a lack of motive for fraud, referring to his English-language certificates and educational certificates which have been produced. On the other hand he has nothing tangible to support his claim that he sat the test. There are no bank records in respect of payment of fees, no evidence of travel, no corroborative oral witnesses available for cross-examination and the voice files have not been properly submitted in evidence.”

35. In any event, as was said by the Tribunal in Varkey, citing from another case dating back to 2016, “there may be many reasons as to why somebody with a reasonable command of the English language might use a proxy taker” ([§111]).

36. The Appellant also says that the Judge acted irrationally when relying on the lack of corroborative evidence. I do not need to set out the legal principles on which reliance is placed in the replacement skeleton argument as many if not most of those either arise in a different context or are not relevant to the Judge’s reasoning in this case. This is not a case for example where the Judge drew adverse inferences from the lack of corroboration. At [§69(j)] of the Decision, the Judge was merely recording the Appellant’s own evidence that he had no documentary proof of having taken the test and taking the lack of evidence into account. In any event, this is not an asylum appeal. In asylum cases, it is generally accepted that corroboration is not required save where it would be reasonable to expect some. In the present context, the Tribunal in Varkey pointed to the importance of “contemporaneous evidence to support an account” and that “the absence of documents that should be capable of being produced to support an individual account” being “a factor that is capable of weighing against the individual” [§115].

37. Nor do I accept that the Judge acted in a way which was procedurally unfair when pointing to the lack of documentary evidence. I accept that the allegation of cheating was made many years ago and even then, there might have been a lack of documentary evidence where, for example, the Appellant said that he paid for the test in cash and not by any bank transfer. It is also the case that the 2016 decision was made some four years after the TOEIC test was taken. However, in relation to the passage of time between 2016 and now, it was relevant that the reason why, if the Appellant had documents or other corroboration, he could not produce them now is that he chose not to challenge the allegation at the time but to wait for many years before trying to return to the UK. That failure to challenge at the time that his leave was curtailed was relevant to the Appellant’s credibility when challenging the TOEIC allegation some nine years later and the Judge was entitled to rely on it.

38. As Mr Lewis pointed out and I accept, even in DK & RK, the Tribunal accepted that a fact-specific analysis has to be carried out. Although I accept that this is apparent from, for example, [§68] of the decision, the Tribunal also makes the point at [§130] of the decision that, where an appellant accepts that the voice on the recording obtained is not his (as is the case here), “there is no ‘voice recognition’ issue” and the only issue is the “chain of custody” issue (which the Tribunal determined in the Secretary of State’s favour). Although the Tribunal accepted that if an appellant’s evidence were “credible, and sufficiently comprehensive”, then that might displace the weight to be given to the general evidence about the voice recordings, that depends on what a Judge makes of an appellant’s evidence which is generally a matter for the Judge who hears that evidence.

39. In this case, the Judge had before him evidence from the Appellant himself that the voice on the recording was not his. He blames this on what was referred to in DK & RK as the “chain of custody” failures which were rejected by the Tribunal in that case. There is some evidence in the Appellant’s witness statement about how and when he took the test [§9-16] at [B/32-34]. The Judge summarised that evidence and the evidence given orally at [§26] to [§41] of the Decision. He said at [§50] of the Decision that he had taken into account all the evidence both documentary and oral. He dealt with that evidence at [§69(j)] and following. He rejected the Appellant’s claim to have been the victim of a miscarriage of justice as “too remote and unsupported by any cogent evidence independent of his own assertion”.

40. The Judge recognised at [§72] of the Decision that the burden of establishing that the Appellant had not taken the test lay with the Respondent. The Judge also noted that the “Look up Tool” evidence was not provided by the Respondent. However, the Judge took into account at [§73] of the Decision that the Appellant took his test at LCSS which was a college referred to in the Tribunal’s decision in Varkey. The evidence set out at [§77-81] of the decision in Varkey provides cogent evidence of cheating at that establishment. The Tribunal accepted the evidence set out at [§123] of the decision that between November 2011 and January 2013, all the results of that college were found either invalid (as the test was in the Appellant’s case) or questionable.

41. It is said by the Appellant’s solicitors that he took his test on 23 May 2012 ([B/424] in relation to voice recordings, certificates at [B/439-440] and curtailment letter at [B/444]). I observe that this date is inconsistent with the Appellant’s witness statement at [B/499-504] where he appears to suggest simultaneously that he sat the test on 20 March 2012 ([§5]) and that he sat the writing test on 4 May 2012 and the speaking test on 23 May 2012 (having paid for the test on 2 May 2012) ([§12-15]). That evidence is repeated in his statement before Judge Hanley ([B/31-36]). The evidence accepted by the Tribunal in Varkey was that “[t]here were no tests that were found to be genuine” at LCSS. Judge Hanley concluded that “[t]he prevalent fraud at LCSS strengthens me in my view that the appellant’s attempt to establish a current private life on the basis of a previous historic [sic] injustice is far too remote and speculative”.

42. The Appellant’s second to fifth grounds do not disclose any error of law. The Judge made findings which were open to him based on his consideration of the Appellant’s evidence against the background of the general evidence and taking into account the Appellant’s failure to challenge the curtailment decision for many years, that the voice recording of the TOEIC test was not the Appellant’s voice and that the college at which the Appellant admits he took the test was one which had been found not to have conducted any genuine tests. The Appellant’s grounds are merely a disagreement with the Judge’s conclusion that the Appellant did indeed cheat in his TOEIC test as the Respondent asserted.

CONCLUSION

43. For the reasons set out above, the grounds do not disclose an error of law in the Decision. I therefore uphold the Decision with the consequence that the Appellant’s appeal remains dismissed.

NOTICE OF DECISION
The Decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Hanley promulgated on 16 July 2024 does not involve the making of an error of law. I therefore uphold the Decision with the consequence that the Appellant’s appeal remains dismissed.

L K Smith
Upper Tribunal Judge Smith
Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

2 June 2025