UI-2025-000575

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The decision



IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-000575

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/54243/2023
LP/05466/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 9th of July 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BLUM
UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE O’BRIEN

Between

MS
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr S Kerr of Counsel
For the Respondent: Mr J Nappey, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 1 July 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 appeals against the decision of the First-tier Tribunal dismissing his appeal against the respondent’s decision to refuse his protection and human rights claim.
2. The grounds asserted that the First-tier Tribunal Judge (‘the Judge’) erred in law by acting procedurally unfairly in making a finding which had not been put to the appellant and generally unreasonably in her approach to assessing the appellant’s credibility. Permission was granted on all pleaded grounds by Upper Tribunal Judge Reeds.
3. In her rule 24 response, the respondent conceded that the Judge had erred as asserted in the first ground, but argued that it was immaterial and further that the remaining grounds disclosed no error of law. However, at the hearing, Mr Nappey conceded that the Judge had materially erred in her assessment of the appellant’s credibility as asserted in paragraph 27: she had failed properly to take into account the appellant's vulnerability when reaching her adverse credibility findings. Mr Nappey further conceded that the finding challenged in the first ground (rejecting the appellant’s claim that he had disposed of his CSID in the sea after he claimed it had been destroyed by water damage, finding instead that he still had his CSID) was rendered unsafe, being fundamentally a credibility finding.
4. We accept these concessions, and find that the decision of the First-tier Tribunal involved the making of an error of law. Furthermore, credibility going to the root of all material aspects of the appeal, no findings of fact can be preserved. It was agreed in the circumstances that it was necessary to remit the appeal to the First-tier Tribunal.
Notice of Decision
1. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal involved the making of an error of law and is set aside.
2. The appeal is remitted to the First-tier Tribunal to be heard again by a different judge with no findings of fact preserved.


Sean O’Brien

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber


2 July 2025