Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-001837

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/63660/2023
LP/12424/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 25 June 2025

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE LAY

Between

CPN
(Anonymity Order made)
Appellant
v

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr S Bellara, instructed by MBM Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms A Ahmed, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

An oral hearing at Field House on 20 June 2025

Order Regarding Anonymity

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

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 62-year-old Philippines national who has been in the UK since 2008. She claimed asylum on 15 March 2021. The Respondent issued a refusal on 24 November 2023, against which she exercised her right of appeal.
2. Her appeal was dismissed by the First-Tier Tribunal in a determination dated 10 March 2025. First-Tier Judge Morgan found that the Appellant did not face a risk of harm in the Philippines from loan sharks. The FTJ also dismissed the appeal under Article 8 ECHR.
3. Permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal was granted by First-Tier Judge Boyes on 23 April 2025 on all pleaded grounds. Ground 1 challenged the FTJ’s approach to sufficiency of protection. Ground 2 challenged the findings on internal relocation. Ground 3 contended that there was no adequate consideration of whether the Appellant met the relevant private life immigration rule. Ground 4 criticised a failure to consider whether the Appellant enjoyed family life in the UK with her sister.
4. There was no Rule 24 reply served by the Secretary of State.
5. Page references below are to the Composite Bundle produced for the UT hearing in the following format: [CB: XX] [Composite Bundle: PDF page number].
Preliminary issues:
6. I was grateful to the representatives for narrowing the issues ahead of the hearing. Ms Ahmed, on behalf of the Secretary of State, conceded that Ground 3 did indeed establish a material error of law. I agree. Paragraphs 25 to 29 of the determination neither cite nor apply paragraph 5.1 of Appendix Private Life as to “very significant obstacles to integration” nor is there regard had to the psychiatric report of Ms Taylor nor is there adequate reasoning on the relevant factors raised by the evidence, including but not limited to her sister and niece in the UK (as aspects of the network of ties that make up her private life).
7. Mr Bellara, on behalf of the Appellant, acknowledged in turn that Ground 4 could not progress given that the Appellant had not sought to argue family life in her appeal, as reflected in the Appeal Skeleton Argument.
Submissions on the asylum findings
8. It remained, therefore, to evaluate Grounds 1 and 2, as pleaded.
9. In my view FTJ Morgan plainly found that the Appellant would not face a risk in his home area. At paragraph 21, the Judge stated: “Given [the Respondent’s] submissions and the respondent’s country evidence I find it difficult to find, even to lower standard, that the appellant has demonstrated a real risk, given the passage of time and the relatively low amounts of money involved, given the appellant’s work in the UK and that the appellant would face ongoing risk from the moneylenders. This is particularly given that it was her former partner who borrowed the money in the first place, albeit on her behalf, and that he has remained in the Philippines, as have her children”. The syntax is attenuated but the FTJ stated that there would not be ongoing risk from the moneylenders.
10. The FTJ makes this clear again at paragraph 22 when he states “even if I had found a real risk to the appellant in her home area…”
11. The FTJ went on to consider internal relocation in any event, albeit it might be said that he did not need to do so given the initial finding that there was no risk in the home area.
12. It was therefore incumbent on the Appellant, if she wished to challenge the dismissal of the asylum ground, to articulate an error of law relating to the finding on risk in the home area. The application for permission does not do that. Ground I relates to sufficiency of protection (which is only relevant/material if there is indeed a risk). Ground II relates to internal relocation (which is also only material if there has been a finding of risk).
13. In the hearing, Mr Bellara argued that the FTJ “did not singly or cumulatively consider all the evidence as to risk”, that there was an analytical muddle as to the necessary stages (a finding on risk to be followed by a finding on sufficiency of protection) and that the Appellant had contended in her witness statement [SB: 34] that risk applied to all of Philippines.
14. The problem for the Appellant is that there is no challenge in the grounds to the finding that there is no risk in the home area. While there may be “muddle” flowing from the structure of the original refusal letter and/or the Appeal Skeleton Argument, the FTJ followed the correct analytical framework by addressing the issue of risk first and finding that there was no risk.
15. Even if the Appellant had framed a ground of appeal against the primary finding on risk, which she did not, I would have found that paragraphs 21 & 22, read together, are a clear and rational finding as to risk in the home area. The FTJ has provided reasoning (cited at paragraph 8, above). It is sufficient. The Senior President’s Practice Direction, “Reasons for decisions”, dated 4 June 2024, reminds the IAC that “adequate reasons for a substantive decision may often be short. In some cases a few succinct paragraphs will suffice… 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.”
16. In light of that, Grounds 1 and 2 are rendered moot. They cannot establish a material error as regards the protection claim since risk was not, in the first instance, established (and, in turn, challenged).
Conclusion
17. I therefore conclude that there was an error of law in the determination as regards the consideration of Article 8 ECHR. The asylum findings of the First-Tier Judge can be preserved. Those preserved findings are at paragraphs 17 to 24. I include the FTJ’s findings on internal relocation at paragraph 23 albeit his view on internal relocation was necessarily expressed as a hypothetical /de bene esse in light of his view on risk.
18. I also stress that the question of whether or not it will be “unduly harsh” or unreasonable to internally relocate is in any event a narrow and bespoke question within refugee law and is distinct from the wider evaluation now required under Article 8 ECHR (albeit with the same language of “unduly harsh”) which was not carried out by FTJ Morgan and should include, for example, as submitted by the Appellant, consideration of her 17 years in the UK, the social utility of her care work, evidence of her mental health, ties to British family members and the obstacles to integration she may or may not face. These are to be set against the public interest in immigration control and any other adverse factors.
19. Mr Bellara invited me to remit the appeal back to the FTT, particularly since the wide-ranging and lengthy oral evidence of the Appellant and her sister on the first occasion is not reflected in the FT determination and needs to be re-heard. Ms Ahmed was “neutral” on venue.
20. I have had regard to Section 7 of the “Senior President’s Practice Statements of the Immigration and Asylum Chambers of the First-tier Tribunal and the Upper Tribunal” (SPT Ryder, 11 June 2018) and Begum (Remaking or remittal) Bangladesh [2023] UKUT 46 (IAC). Remittal is not the usual course but it is appropriate in the circumstances of this appeal, having regard to the nature and extent of the oral evidence to be heard from the Appellant and her sister and the findings to be made.

Notice of Decision
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal, which dismissed the appeal, is set aside in part and the appeal is remitted back to the First-Tier Tribunal for consideration of Article 8 ECHR only. The dismissal of the asylum claim is upheld and thus paragraphs 17 to 24 of the determination are preserved.

Taimour Lay

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

20 June 2025