Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2025-001148
UI-2025-001147
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/57359/2024
PA/57354/2024
LP/06049/2024
LP/06048/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

24th August 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE SEELHOFF

Between

IH
IK
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms Revill, Counsel instructed by MTC Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mrs Nolan, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 7 August 2026

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellants are 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 appellants. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS
1. The Appellants are nationals of Sri Lanka and are mother and daughter. They claimed asylum on the 3rd November 2022 on the basis that the First-Appellant’s husband, the Second Appellant’s father, was a magistrate and made rulings adverse to the interest of the Sri Lankan government which led to adverse interest in him and his family. The applications were refused on the 7th March 2024.
Appeal before the First-tier
2. The appeal was heard on the 21st January 2025 and dismissed in a decision dated the 30th January 2025. The Judge found that the first Appellant was not credible and rejected her evidence entirely. The second Appellant’s evidence was dealt with briefly and also rejected.
3. An article 8 claim based on the First-Appellant’s new relationship was also rejected.
Grant of Permission to Appeal
4. Permission to appeal was granted on the 10th March 2025 by a Judge of the First-tier tribunal on all grounds. It is unclear why the matter has taken over a year to be heard in the Upper Tribunal.
The Hearing
5. At the outset of the hearing it was confirmed that the appeal was resisted on all grounds. Ms Revill made submissions outlining what she said were errors of law and Ms Nolan responded. Ms Revill made further submissions in reply and I reserved the decision.
Reasons
Ground 1
6. In her grounds and before me Ms Revill accepted that the Judge had made entirely sustainable findings that the First-Appellant had lied extensively about the circumstance of her divorce from her husband including in claiming that her husband initiated and conducted the divorce proceedings without her knowledge.
7. It is said that the judge erred in treating that error as undermining the Appellant’s credibility in respect of the substantive asylum claim without giving himself a self-direction to the effect that it does not follow from a witness lying about one thing that they have lied about another as set out in Uddin v SSHD [2020] EWCA Civ 338.
8. Ms Nolan for the Respondent emphasised that Judges should be inferred to understand the approach to take to evidence as a whole and that an express self-direction was not required.
9. The judge conducted a global assessment of credibility and expressly did not say that the Appellant’s lies about the divorce meant she had lied about the rest of her account but found in terms that her lies about various aspects of the divorce and contact with her husband “damages her credibility” [32 and 33]. The Judge also identified other factors which he said damaged her credibility in addition to the lies about the divorce [28 and 35].
10. It is accordingly clear that the judge did not treat the findings that there were lies about the divorce as meaning the First Appellant was necessarily lying about the entirety of her evidence, but as factors relevant to the assessment of credibility which he expressly reference to considering “in the round” [36] before concluding that she was not dishonest.
11. I do not find that the Judge erred as alleged in respect of ground 1.
Ground 2
12. This ground complains about the only specific challenge to the second Appellant’s credibility in the decision in which it is said that she failed to give details of an “attempted abduction” of her that matched her mother’s account of the same incident at interview and subsequently gave an account in her witness statement that was discrepant with that she had given previously.
13. It is said that the Judge failed to take full account of the exchange at interview. In respect to Question 37 of her interview the second Appellant said;
“... my father and mother were very worried that my brother will be kidnapped, or I will be sexually abused. I was very scared. I remember this one incident when I was coming home from school and some men were following me. Since that day I was so worried.” (q37)
14. Immediately after this question the second Appellant was given a ten-minute break apparently because she had become very upset and was then not asked to follow up questions about the incident when the interview resumed. In that context it was clearly unfair to treat the second Appellant’s evidence as being inconsistent with the additional evidence contained in her witness statement as she was not asked to give a full account of the incident that she had disclosed during the interview.
15. Whilst the judge noted that the Second Appellant had got much of the information she had about the remainder of the case from her mother [34] which might infer why less weight was given to her evidence, there is only one reason given for challenging her credibility in isolation and the only reason given for challenging her evidence that there was an attempt to kidnap her.
16. I find that the judge has not given adequate reasons for rejecting the second Appellant’s evidence, and that that renders the findings on credibility in respect of both Appellants unsafe as I cannot be sure the judge would have found the second Appellant not credible but for the error.
Ground 3
17. The First Appellant complains that having held that the First Appellant’s Islamic marriage certificate was not valid for UK legal purposes, it was unfair of the Judge to find that the First Appellant’s new partner could potentially move to Sri Lanka as a spouse.
18. I am not persuaded that this was an error of law. The Judge is an expert on UK law and could make that finding in respect of UK applications. The lawfulness of the marriage for the purpose of Sri Lankan law would be a matter of foreign law and would require expert evidence. I further note that the Judge did not make an express finding that the relationship would be recognised in Sri Lanka but simply and correctly noted that there was no evidence before him to say that the partner could not obtain the right to reside in Sri Lanka as an unmarried partner [41 (c)].
Ground 4
19. The complaint is that it was procedurally unfair of the Judge to take into account the possibility of the First Appellant returning to Sri Lanka to apply for entry clearance when considering article 8 as this was not raised at the hearing and that had it been raised arguments might have been made in respect of the interruption of the First Appellant’s son’s studies him being in the middle of his GCSEs or other factors.
20. The Judge and the Respondent were in difficulties as the Appellants’ evidence was filed late (just three days before the hearing) and after the review meaning that the Tribunal and the Respondent were looking at these issues with relatively little notice although the Respondent consented to the admission of evidence and the raising of the associated issues [11].
21. Considering the proportionality of expecting individuals to return home and then apply for entry-clearance is an obvious one and one I would have expected the representatives to have anticipated being raised when assisting in preparing for the appeal.
22. That said there is procedural unfairness in taking a point without allowing an Appellant to respond to it and accordingly I find that there is unfairness here albeit likely to have arisen from the very late service of evidence by the Appellant. That unfairness renders the article 8 decision procedurally unfair.
Ground 5
23. This ground argued that the second Appellant had family life with her mother notwithstanding that she was an adult.
24. Ms Revill whilst not conceding the ground accepted that the Court of Appeal decision in IA [2025] EWCA Civ 1516 was highly relevant to the outcome and did not make further submissions. I am satisfied that the judge applied the correct test as to the existence of family life and approached the matter consistently with the approach endorsed by the Court of Appeal in IA.
Disposal
25. I have found that the credibility findings in respect of the asylum claim are unsound and require remaking. I have also found there is procedural unfairness in the approach to article 8. Consequentially I consider it appropriate to set the decisions aside in full.
26. I have considered how most appropriately to dispose of the appeals and consider that because I have set the entirety of the decisions aside it is appropriate for them to be remitted to the First-tier for remaking.

Notice of Decision
The decision of the First-tier tribunal contained material errors of law and is set aside entirely with no findings preserved.
The decision shall be remade in the First-tier tribunal by a different Judge.

A.Seelhoff

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

14th August 2026