Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-002129
First tier number: (HU/63738/2024)

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 4th of December 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BRUCE

Between

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Appellant
And

Darwn Qadir Salih
(no anonymity order made)
Respondent

Representation:

For the Appellant: Mr Mullen, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer
For the Respondent: -

Heard at Melville St, Edinburgh on the 27th November 2025

DECISION AND REASONS

1. The Respondent is a national of Iraq born 28 June 1999. She seeks leave to enter the United Kingdom as the spouse of a person present and settled in the United Kingdom, her husband Mr Ibrahemi.

2. By her refusal letter dated the 28 September 2024 the Secretary of State refused to grant entry clearance to the Respondent. That was because she had found the evidence of the Sponsor Mr Ibrahemi’s employment to be fraudulent. Mr Ibrahemi claimed to be working full time at a café in Edinburgh called Castlegate Café. The Secretary of State had conducted verification checks with HMRC and Companies House which had shown no record of him working there, and that the café had in fact ceased trading.

3. The Respondent appealed and the matter came before the First-tier Tribunal ‘on the papers’. The Sponsor Mr Ibrahemi had supplied a good deal of evidence about his employment at Castlegate Café. This included his payslips and P60; his own Halifax bank statements showing monthly deposits of approximately £2100 from ‘Castlegate’; confirmation from HMRC of online payments of Employers PAYE and NI contributions, and ‘SumUp’ accounts statements for the café showing operational transactions – such as purchases from wholesalers and food supply companies - throughout the period 2024-2025, as well as the payment of wages, including to Mr Ibrahemi.

4. The Tribunal weighed all of this evidence against the ‘document verification report’ (DVR) provided by the Secretary of State. It noted that the report contains references both to Castlegate Café and Castle Café, and says this:

“…It is by no means clear why these different names are given. It is further unclear which of these names, if either, appear in the HMRC records being used for comparison.

12. The appellant has provided a Sumup bank statement dated 26 January 2025 in the name of Castlegate which, among many other payments, records on 28 July 2024 a payment as wage to the sponsor in a sum corresponding to the relevant payslip. I find that this is compelling evidence that Castlegate was trading and employing the sponsor on this date. This, together with the use of different names for the business, causes me to question the reliability of the conclusions found in the Document Verification Report upon which the respondent’s decision is based”.

5. The Tribunal therefore allowed the appeal, being satisfied that Mr Ibrahemi is genuinely employed by Castlegate Café, and that being the only matter in issue.

6. The Secretary of State sought permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal, which was granted by Upper Tribunal Judge Reeds on the 30 June 2025 in the following terms:

“However it is arguable as the grounds contend that checks had been undertaken against the correct name of Castlegate Café and as set out at paragraph 4 (iv) of the respondents review uploaded on 28 February 2025 and the corresponding link to Companies House to show that the business was dissolved in March 2024. Arguably the FtTJ did not consider that evidence in assessing the reliability of the DVR and the other evidence”.

7. Judge Reeds was, in my view, quite right to grant permission. That is because the Secretary of State had produced a document with an embedded hyperlink that led the reader to Companies House, which did indeed show that ‘Castlegate Café’ was dissolved as a company in March 2024. Whilst that evidence was not determinative, it was certainly relevant to the First-tier Tribunal’s assessment. The failure to have regard to that evidence was, I accept, an error in approach.

8. I am not however satisfied that this is in any way material. That is because the fact that the legal entity listed at Companies House was dissolved in March 2024 was not determinative of whether Castlegate Café was operating as a business, and whether Mr Ibrahemi was employed there. As the DVR itself acknowledges, this was a business operating as a partnership. Ibrahemi attended the hearing before me in the company of a Mr Sultan, who identified himself as the son of one of the partners/owners of the café. He handed up a letter from HMRC dated 26 November 2023 concerning the café’s registration as a partnership for self-assessment. Although I heard no expert evidence on the point, Mr Mullen and Mr Sultan were in agreement that a partnership of this type would not appear on the Companies House register. Whatever the reason for the Café’s short lived entry onto that register in March 2024, it need not concern me, because that was not the structure that the business in fact adopted in the long run.

9. The First-tier Tribunal described the evidence that Mr Ibrahemi is employed as claimed as “compelling” and that is a description that I respectfully adopt. The payslips, bank statements, SumUp accounts and HMRC evidence all tally, and there is nothing on the face of those documents to indicate any fraud. Whilst the Companies House record was a legitimate line of enquiry for the Secretary of State it did not in itself establish that the Café had closed down, or that Mr Ibrahemi’s employment had ceased. Any error in the First-tier Tribunal having failed to follow the hyperlink was therefore immaterial. On the balance of probabilities I am satisfied that Mr Ibrahemi is, and at all material times has been, employed as claimed, and that his earnings are in excess of the applicable ‘minimum income requirement’ in his wife’s case.

Decisions

10. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal is upheld and the Secretary of State’s appeal is dismissed.

11. There is no order for anonymity.

12. There has already been a significant delay in this matter, resulting entirely from the unjustified conclusions of the DVR. No doubt the Entry Clearance Officer will therefore consider prioritising the grant of leave to enter to the Respondent.

Upper Tribunal Judge Bruce
Immigration and Asylum Chamber
27 November 2025