Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-001962

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/68713/2023

LP/03444/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

11th June 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE HIRST

Between

BA
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

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 either directly or indirectly. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS
1. The Appellant appeals from the decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Chana dated 4 March 2025, dismissing his appeal on protection grounds. Permission to appeal was granted by the First-tier Tribunal on 30 April 2025.
2. This decision has been made without an error of law hearing, the Respondent having conceded in a response under Rule 24 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008 that there were material errors in the decision of the First-tier Tribunal. For the reasons set out below, I concur with the parties. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal is set aside and the appeal is remitted to the First-tier Tribunal for a de novo hearing before a different judge.
Background
3. The Appellant’s nationality is disputed. He claims to be a national of Somalia, who had lived unlawfully in Ethiopia for many years before leaving due to mistreatment by the Oromo tribe; his protection claim was based on the risk of persecution in Somalia by the Hawiye clan. The Respondent believes the Appellant to be a national of Ethiopia.
4. The Appellant’s asylum claim was refused on 12 December 2023. His appeal against that decision came before the First-tier Tribunal on 1 January 2025. The First-tier Tribunal dismissed the appeal. The judge found that the Appellant had a right of residence in Ethiopia and would be entitled to Ethiopian citizenship.
5. The Appellant appealed. The grounds of appeal identified a number of errors in the First-tier Tribunal’s decision, including:
a. A failure to exercise anxious scrutiny, evidenced by a significant number of typographical and factual errors in the decision, including reference to the “Hawaii” rather than “Hawiye” clan; wrongly stating that the Appellant’s children were born in Egypt instead of Ethiopia; a bizarre reference to a “kookaburra farm”; miscalculating the length of the Appellant’s residence in Ethiopia; stating that the appeal had been heard on 1 January 2025, a date on which the First-tier Tribunal does not sit; and dating the decision as 28 March 2017, several years before the asylum claim was made;
b. Making findings as to Ethiopian nationality law, when there was no evidence before the judge on that issue, and when the evidence cited by the judge did not in fact demonstrate that the Appellant would be entitled to naturalise as an Ethiopian citizen;
c. Misquoting and wrongly relying on ST (Ethiopia) CG [2011] UKUT 00252 (IAC), a case involving disputed Eritrean/Ethiopian nationality, when it had not been suggested by either party that the Appellant was Eritrean or that he had been excluded from Ethiopian nationality on racial grounds;
d. Making equivocal findings and/or giving insufficient reasons on the key issue of the Appellant’s nationality, by finding that the Appellant had a “right of residence [in Ethopia], if not citizenship” and making a finding that he would be entitled to naturalise as an Ethiopian citizen which was not supported by the evidence before the judge;
e. Misrepresenting the Appellant’s evidence;
f. Wrongly conflating the Appellant’s fear of the Oromo tribe in Ethiopia with his fear of the Hawiye clan in Somalia.
6. Permission to appeal was granted on all grounds by the First-tier Tribunal on 30 April 2025. Following the grant of permission to appeal, on 15 May 2025 the Respondent filed a response under Rule 24 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, conceding that the decision of the First-tier Tribunal contained material errors of law and should be set aside. The Respondent indicated that the appeal should be remitted to the First-tier Tribunal for rehearing and the Appellant confirmed by email that he did not object to that disposal.
Decision
7. It is trite that the First-tier Tribunal is required to give conscientious and fair consideration to an appeal before it. As the Court of Appeal made clear in R (YH) v SSHD [2010] EWCA Civ 116 at §24, the requirement for ‘anxious scrutiny’ in protection and human rights claims underlines “the very special human context in which such cases are brought, and the need for decisions to show by their reasoning that every factor which might tell in favour of an applicant has been properly taken into account”. Where the decision of the First-tier Tribunal contains significant errors of fact, or refers to matters which are not in dispute, or displays an absence of reasoning which explains the conclusions reached by the judge, an appellate court cannot be confident that the Tribunal has properly carried out a “conscientious and fair” consideration of the appeal: cf ML (Nigeria) v SSHD [2013] EWCA Civ 844.
8. This is such a case. The First-tier Tribunal’s decision displays throughout an absence of care, evidenced by the numerous typographical and factual errors identified in the Appellant’s grounds of appeal. That however is not the only material error in the decision. On the issue of the Appellant’s nationality, which was central to the appeal, the judge appears (§11) to have taken judicial notice of Ethiopian nationality law without evidence or submissions on that point. Her conclusion that the Appellant was entitled to Ethiopian citizenship was unsupported by the evidence before her and her reasoning was insufficient to explain how she reached her conclusions.
9. I conclude, in agreement with the parties, that the decision of the First-tier Tribunal disclosed material errors of law. The parties were in agreement that the appeal should be remitted to the First-tier Tribunal for rehearing and I agree that that is the appropriate disposal in the circumstances of this case.
Notice of Decision
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal involved the making of material errors of law and is set aside.
The appeal is remitted to the First-tier Tribunal for a de novo hearing before a judge other than First-tier Tribunal Judge Chana, with no findings preserved.

L Hirst

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

4 June 2025