Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-002514

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/67996/2023
LP/02308/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 28 August 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL MAHMOOD
DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE STERNBERG

Between

TS
(ANONYMITY DIRECTION MADE)
Applicant
and

Secretary of State for the Home Department
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Adewoye, solicitor, of Prime solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms Isherwood, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 4 August 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 and/or members of her family. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS

Introduction
1. The appellant, a citizen of Namibia, was granted permission to appeal the decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Dobe (‘the Judge’) who dismissed the appellant’s appeal by a determination dated 3 April 2025, following a hearing which took place at the Hatton Cross Hearing Centre on 14 March 2025. That appeal challenged the respondent’s decision to refuse her asylum and human rights claims dated 27 May 2022.
2. First-tier Tribunal Judge Bowen granted permission to appeal on 6 June 2025. That decision continued an order granting the appellant anonymity made by the Judge. We maintain that order given the nature of the appellant’s claims.
3. The hearing took place before us in person on 4 August 2025. We heard submissions from Mr. Adewoye for the Appellant and Ms. Ishwerwood for the Respondent. We received a composite bundle running to 181 pages in advance of the hearing. That bundle contained material which the appellant invited us to admit under rule 15(2A) of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008 consisting of 5 pages of photographs of the appellant with her partner, KL, and 3 pages of screenshots of WhatsApp messages between them in 2023 and 2024. On the morning of the hearing we were sent a further separate document which the appellant sought permission to admit under rule 15(2A). This document was an undated letter from Dr. Dwyer providing an update on the appellant’s medical condition and her ability to access treatment for HIV in the event of her return to Namibia. We will deal with the admissibility of those documents in the substance of our decision.

Decision of the First-tier Tribunal
4. The Judge found (at §§1-8) that the Appellant is a national of Namibia and set out the background to her protection claim, having faced threats from her husband in Namibia, her relationship formed in the UK with KL in June 2022. They started living together in October 2022 and got engaged in January 2023 and married in October 2024. She has been HIV positive since April 2014 and on anti-retroviral therapy drugs since then. The Judge summarised the Appellant’s claims that there would be very significant obstacles to her return to Namibia and in the alternative that returning her to Namibia would result in unjustifiably harsh consequences. The Judge summarised the respondent’s case and the chronology of her asylum claim and interview.
5. The Judge then set out what happened at the hearing before him, the issues in dispute and the evidence called (at §§9-17) including the fact that the appellant and KL both gave evidence and were cross-examined. The Judge noted that the appellant’s representative, then as now Mr. Adewoye, applied to adduce 5 photographs uploaded the day before the hearing. These photos showed the Appellant and her partner getting married on 28 October 2024 and an explanation for their late service was provided. The Judge admitted the photos into evidence bearing in mind their importance to the appellant’s case, their modest size and the fact that the appellant’s had already served a marriage certificate evidencing the fact of the marriage which the photographs supported.
6. The Judge explicitly recorded (at §17) that they had considered all the evidence, both documentary and oral and had taken it all into account whether referred to or not.
7. In the next part of the judgment (§§18-20) the Judge set out the legal framework applying to the protection claim and article 8 ECHR.
8. The Judge’s findings on the appellant’s asylum claim were prefaced with the following paragraph (at §21):
I have considered all of the evidence and submissions in the round, but I do not refer to each and every piece of evidence in this decision. I refer to what is material to my findings and where I have accepted or rejected a piece of evidence, I give my reasons for doing so.
There followed (at §22) citation of relevant authority on the analysis of credibility including KB and AH (credibility – structured approach) Pakistan [2017] UKUT 0049. As a part of setting out the approach he took to credibility the Judge said this:
Ultimately, in assessing an Appellant’s credibility, a decision whether the account given is in the essential respects truthful must be taken by a Tribunal on the totality of the evidence, viewed holistically: Mibanga [2005] EWCA Civ 367.
Other relevant authorities on lies, plausibility and corroboration followed.
9. Applying those authorities to the evidence the Judge found (at §§23-26) that the Appellant’s claim is based on her being forced to have a relationship with a powerful man referred to as SS and now being an HIV positive woman. The former is not a Convention reason. The latter would qualify as a Convention reason but there was nothing to substantiate the Appellant’s claim that she fears persecution by reason of her HIV positive status. There is no Convention reason, her asylum claim cannot succeed, nor can her humanitarian protection claim due to credibility issues.
10. The Judge then made a series of findings as to why the appellant’s account was not credible (at §27). In summary these were as follows:
a. There were significant date inconsistencies.
b. The appellant said in her asylum interview that she was an economic migrant which was inconsistent with her claim that she feared persecution.
c. The appellant’s account regarding when she was forced into a relationship with SS was inconsistent.
d. Other aspects of the appellant’s account of having delaying reporting threats made to her in 2015 until 2021 were not plausible.
e. As to her marriage to KL, this ‘lacks credibility.’ Despite being engaged to him in January 2023 KL did not mention this in the reference he wrote on the Appellant’s behalf in July 2023 which presented him as her friend rather than her fiancée. The Judge nonetheless went on to consider the marriage under the head of article 8 ECHR.
f. The appellant’s claim has changed over time. She first said she feared SS and her parents. She now relies on prejudice and mistreatment because she has HIV. She also relies on her marriage to KL.
g. There is no evidence that SS is powerful or influential or that his father is a politician or that he has links to the police.
h. Her claimed relationship and forced sexual activity with SS lacks detail.
i. The appellant said in her asylum interview that her daughter was born in 2016 but in her witness statement she changed this to January 2015. She can be expected to know the precise date of her daughter’s birth.
11. The Judge rejected the respondent’s submission that factors in section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc) Act 2004 undermined her credibility (at §§28-30). The Judge considered documents the Appellant produced against the Tanveer Ahmed criteria. The Judge accepted that the appellant’s marriage certificate shows she got married in October 2024 but that document does not assist in establishing whether the marriage is genuine. At §30 the Judge held:
Weighing everything and considering the case as a whole, I find the appellant’s claim to be lacking in credibility. In my judgement, looking all of the evidence in the round, it is not credible that the appellant encountered the difficulties she asserts as part of this claim…
12. The Judge then gave further reasons for rejecting the appellant’s asylum claim and found (at §§31-36) that there was sufficiency of protection in Namibia and that internal relocation is open to her. Her asylum and humanitarian protection claims were refused.
13. In relation to Article 8 ECHR and Immigration Rule 276ADE(vi) the Judge concluded (at §37-39) that the appellant would face challenges but not very significant obstacles to reintegration, she is enough of an insider to carry on daily life in Namibia. She will be able to continue her relationship with KL by modern communication and she can make an out of country application and he can visit her in Namibia.
14. Finally, the Judge considered article 8 ECHR outside of the immigration rules (at §§40-46). The Judge concluded that the appellant has not proved her marriage is genuine, it is to bolster her claim. Carrying out the balancing exercise, the Judge described her relationship with KL including the dependency between them, that he relies on her care but was able to care for himself before they married and that this was a relationship that attracts little weight because it was established when the appellant’s status in the UK was precarious or unlawful. The Judge also considered the appellant’s HIV positive status and concluded that the factors in favour do not outweigh the public interest in removal. The consequences are not unjustifiably harsh and do not breach Article 8 ECHR. The Appeal was accordingly dismissed on all grounds.

Ground of Appeal
15. The appellant has advanced one ground of appeal put in a number of ways, which we summarise:
i. The Judge made inadequate findings at §41 that the appellant has not proven that her marriage is genuine. The reasons for this conclusion were inadequate.
ii. The Judge failed to take into consideration relevant evidence that proved that the appellant and KL’s marriage was genuine and subsisting.
iii. The Judge’s error was material and led them to only consider the appellant’s private life, not her family life.

The rule 15(2A) application
16. Before turning to the submissions of the parties on the Ground of Appeal and our conclusions on it, we deal with the application to admit further evidence under Rule 15(2A). At the outset of the hearing the appellant applied to adduce an undated letter from Dr. Dwyer, a consultant physician at the West Middlesex University Hospital which was served on the day before the hearing, a Sunday. That letter expressed concern that the appellant would be able to access treatment for HIV treatment if she returned to Namibia, due to recent US aid cuts and that she might become unwell and develop potentially fatal AIDS if untreated. Mr. Adewoye said that this evidence came into being a few days before the hearing. He also applied to adduce the photographs and WhatsApp messages referred to at [3] above. We invited Mr. Adewoye to assist us on why we should admit the evidence relied on under rule 15(2A) and how it showed an error of law on the part of the Judge. Whilst we are prepared to accept that the undated letter may have only been written and come into being a few days before the hearing, the same cannot be said of the photographs of the appellant and KL and screenshots of their WhatsApp messages in 2023 and 2024. We consider there was unreasonable delay in producing that evidence. In any event, none of this evidence assists us in deciding whether the Judge’s decision on Article 8 contains an error of law. It might be relevant were there to be a reconsideration or remittal of this matter but it is not relevant at the error of law stage. We exercise our discretion to refuse to admit this evidence.

The submissions of the parties
17. We summarise the submissions of the parties on the arguments advanced at the hearing. For the appellant Mr. Adewoye submitted as follows:
a. The Judge at §41 made a finding that the Appellant has not proven this was a genuine marriage. He does accept that he she has married KL. The test should be whether the marriage was genuine and subsisting which was the focus of the Respondent’s review. The Judge’s Reasons were inadequate that the marriage was to bolster the appellant’s application to remain in the UK. At §27(e) the Judge found that KL in a letter of support did not refer to their being engaged in 2023. There was evidence before the Judge of their relationship from 2022-2024. KL did give reasons for this omission at the hearing, it is not in his statement of 16 April 2024 at pages 73-74 of the bundle. Their friendship developed and he wrote it casually. The letter shows a deep relationship. The Judge said they took evidence into consideration. The Judge heard KL’s evidence, we do not have a transcript of it. Based on the evidence that was before the Judge, there was evidence of cohabitation and money transfers between them, pictures and evidence of familiarity between them. It could not be rational for the Judge to find no family life between the parties.
b. The error of law is that the Judge’s decision was against the weight of the evidence. While weight was a matter for the Judge, they have not engaged with the evidence, that goes to a material fact in his findings. The Judge accepted that the marriage certificate is evidence that they were married. In determining whether there is family life the relationship has to be subsisting. The Judge went on to consider that the marriage was to bolster her immigration status in the UK. The only reason that he gave was that KL did not write in his letter that he was engaged to the appellant. Based on the evidence before him he ought to have considered further evidence to establish the subsistence of that marriage. He would have been able to consider the case on the basis of family life.
c. The finding at §38 that the Appellant could continue her relationship with KL from Namibia using technology is contrary to the finding that there is no family life. If the Judge had considered this as a family life case not a private life case there would have been more consideration of KL’s medical condition.
d. At §44(a) the Judge considered the consequences for KL of her return to Namibia. The Judge found that the appellant has married KL, but also found the marriage is not genuine and that it was done to bolster their immigration status. Approaching this issue on the basis of private life is different from if they were genuinely husband and wife. What more could the appellant have done to prove this was a genuine marriage? She provided a marriage certificate, there was evidence of cohabitation and their engagement. The Judge gave inadequate reasons for finding that the marriage was not genuine or to find that appellant has not proved that it is a genuine marriage.
e. If there was an error of law, was it material? It is. The approach taken by the Judge, considering this issue on a private life basis was a material error of law. The Judge did not accept the marriage was genuine and subsisting and did not give scrutiny to that marriage. They are married and living together and the level of dependency and the care needed is more than looking at it as if they were just friends. The Judge gave their opinion that the marriage lacked credibility but provided no legal reason for saying that the appellant married to bolster her immigration status. KL’s letter from 2023 is a supporting letter for the asylum claim. The issue of the marriage was adduced as a new matter. There was evidence from the Appellant that her marriage to the sponsor was subsisting. They were engaged before the marriage, she was not asked in her asylum interview if she was engaged or in a relationship with anyone. She was asked if she had family, not if she was engaged. She was unrepresented and did not know much about the process. It is not fair to assume she could have given an answer to a question she was not asked as an unrepresented asylum seeker.
f. The Judge had to take everything into consideration in the round. The Judge was not considering the case on a family life basis. The Judge was not entitled to find at §41 that she has not proved that she did not have family life. The Judge did not engage with the evidence of the marriage, other than the letter of KL. Different aspects of the claim should not determine credibility. The Judge should not use credibility findings in relation to asylum in relation to the marriage claim, they are different.
g. The gravamen of the appellant’s submission is that the Judge could not, based on the letter of July 2023 from KL find that the relationship was not genuine.
h. The determination on the asylum claim is not challenged but the findings on the Article 8 claim cannot be sustained. The case should be remitted to the First-tier if the appeal is allowed
18. Ms. Ishwerwood for the Respondent resisted this ground. She submitted that there is no material error of law and relied on a Rule 24 response. She developed this submission:
a. There was no reference to oral evidence given at the hearing in the grounds on which permission to appeal was granted and to which the rule 24 response replies nor in the skeleton argument that came after it. The record of proceedings has not been provided and this tribunal does not have evidence of that. This is a clear decision based on the evidence.
b. The Appellant was asked about family life in the UK in her asylum interview at questions 25 and 26, she had more than one opportunity to say she is engaged. Question 26 was her opportunity to say that she was engaged to be married.
c. The findings on asylum and humanitarian protection grounds have not been challenged, nor have the findings relating to medical treatment in Namibia. This Tribunal must look at the credibility findings made by the Judge as a whole, not just in isolation on the relationship. The Judge notes at §11 that the appellant was given permission to adduce 5 photographs of her marriage on the day of the hearing. The Judge made credibility findings that were open to him at §27.
d. The Judge found at §41 that the appellant was married to KL even if the marriage was contrived to bolster the claim. The Judge found article 8 was engaged. S.117B(4)(b) and (5) of the Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 means that little weight should be ascribed to this relationship. The Judge considered the relationship and the nature of that relationship at §44. The Judge notes that KL was able to look after himself.
e. The Judge considered all the evidence. They accepted there was a marriage. There was limited evidence of that. Nevertheless the Judge looked at the position in the alternative as to the degree of the relationship and made findings open to them. If allowed, the appeal should remain in the Upper Tribunal for reconsideration on the narrow point now raised.

Discussion
19. In considering this Ground, we bear in mind the approach we should take as set out by the Court of Appeal in Yalcin v SSHD [2024] EWCA Civ 74; [2024] 1 WLR 1626, by Underhill LJ at [50]-[51]:
50. … I should recapitulate the approach that should be taken in considering whether the FTT made an error of law. At para. 72 of his judgment in HA (Iraq) (but with reference to the appeal in AA (Nigeria)) Lord Hamblen said:
"It is well established that judicial caution and restraint is required when considering whether to set aside a decision of a specialist fact finding tribunal. In particular:
(i) They alone are the judges of the facts. Their decisions should be respected unless it is quite clear that they have misdirected themselves in law. It is probable that in understanding and applying the law in their specialised field the tribunal will have got it right. Appellate courts should not rush to find misdirections simply because they might have reached a different conclusion on the facts or expressed themselves differently – see AH (Sudan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2007] UKHL 49; [2008] AC 678 per Baroness Hale of Richmond at para 30.
(ii) Where a relevant point is not expressly mentioned by the tribunal, the court should be slow to infer that it has not been taken into account – see MA (Somalia) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2010] UKSC 49; [2011] 2 All ER 65 at para 45 per Sir John Dyson.
(iii) When it comes to the reasons given by the tribunal, the court should exercise judicial restraint and should not assume that the tribunal misdirected itself just because not every step in its reasoning is fully set out – see R (Jones) v First-tier Tribunal (Social Entitlement Chamber) [2013] UKSC 19; [2013] 2 AC 48 at para 25 per Lord Hope."
51. Mr Malik relied on that passage but added some further points by way of amplification. The only one that I need mention is that in AA (Nigeria)1 in this Court Popplewell LJ said, at para. 34:
"Experienced judges in this specialised tribunal are to be taken to be aware of the relevant authorities and to be seeking to apply them without needing to refer to them specifically, unless it is clear from their language that they have failed to do so."
20. In general terms, we agree with Ms. Ishwerwood on this ground for the reasons we now give. First, the Judge gave clear and sustainable reasons for finding that the appellant had not given a truthful account. The Judge was entitled, in these circumstances, to proceed on the basis that the appellant’s evidence was not reliable and not credible. At its core, this ground amounts to a disagreement with the Judge’s findings which does not amount to an error of law.
21. Second, the Judge’s negative credibility findings regarding the appellant’s asylum claim were plainly open to the Judge. The Judge was entitled to make negative credibility findings on this issue. Those findings were not challenged on this appeal and are plainly relevant to the appellant’s credibility as a whole, including whether her marriage in the UK was a genuine one or not. We do not accept that the Judge was not entitled to take a holistic view of the appellant’s credibility, authorities including KB & AH and Mibanga make clear that a holistic approach should be taken. There was no error in the Judge’s overall approach to the appellant’s credibility at §27.
22. Third, we must have respect for the fact that the Judge reached their findings and conclusions, having had the benefit of hearing the appellant and KL’s evidence which was challenged in cross-examination, and submissions from both parties on this issue immediately thereafter. Whilst Mr. Adewoye asserted that KL had provided an explanation for not mentioning that he and the appellant had got engaged in January 2023 when he wrote a letter of support on her behalf in January 2023, there was no evidence of this. It is not mentioned in KL’s witness statement in the bundle. We were not provided with a record of the proceedings before the First-tier Tribunal nor a witness statement from the advocates appearing there, including Mr. Adewoye. Accordingly, there is no evidential basis for the assertion that KL provided an explanation for this omission in his evidence to the Judge.
23. Fourth, Mr. Adewoye was wrong to submit that the letter of July 2023 was the only evidence that the appellant’s marriage to KL was not credible. The Judge had received not only that letter, which plainly called for an explanation, but also the witness statements of the appellant and KL which did not provide that explanation. Nor did the appellant’s asylum interview record which was compiled some 10 months after she had got engaged to KL on her account. She told her interviewer (at questions 25 and 26) that she did not have any family in the UK ‘apart from friend who accommodated me.’ Asked if she was married or had any children, she said she had never been married and had one daughter. She did not say she was living with or being accommodated by her partner or fiancée. Nor did she say that she was engaged to be married when asked if she was married. There was therefore no evidence to show that the inconsistency illustrated by KL’s letter of July 2023 had been explained and ample evidence to show that the Judge was correct to conclude that the Appellant’s marriage to KL lacked credibility. The Judge stated explicitly that they had considered all of the evidence placed before them. Their reasoning on this issue was plainly sufficient.
24. Fifth, the Judge did not fail to decide that the appellant’s marriage was not subsisting. It is apparent from the consideration that the Judge gave to this issue under the head of Article 8 EHCR (judgment at §41) that they accepted the fact of the marriage but not that it was genuine. Accordingly, they accepted it was subsisting but not genuine and approached article 8 on that basis
25. Sixth, we reject the submission that the Judge did not take into account the Appellant’s evidence that the marriage was genuine and subsisting. Whilst Mr. Adewoye accepted that weight was a matter for the Judge, he submitted that the weight of the evidence was against the Judge’s conclusion that the marriage was not genuine. We do not accept that the Judge did not take this evidence into account. The Judge explicitly stated at §17 and §21 that they had taken all of the evidence into account. There was a rational and logical basis to reject that aspect of the appellant’s evidence based on the negative credibility findings that the Judge made against the appellant in the round, together with the specific credibility issues that arose in relation to her claim to be in a genuine relationship of marriage with KL. This part of this ground also amounts to no more than a disagreement with the Judge’s conclusions and the weight they gave to the evidence which was quintessentially a matter for them.
26. Seventh, it follows from our conclusions set out above that the asserted error on the part of the Judge was not material. It was correct for the Judge to consider the appellant’s private life in the context where she had married KL but, as the Judge found, had done so to bolster her claim. The Judge’s approach to the weight to give to that relationship under section 117B of the Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 is unimpeachable. It would have been illogical for the Judge to have considered a counterfactual situation in which the appellant did enjoy family life with KL in a genuine marriage given the findings that he made. We reject the appellant’s submission to the contrary.
27. For these reasons, we find that the sole ground of appeal is without merit and does not give rise to an error of law.
28. We therefore dismiss the Appellant’s appeal on all grounds.
Notice of Decision
29. The First-tier Tribunal’s decision did not involve the making of an error of law.
30. The appeal is dismissed.
31. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal which had dismissed the Appellant’s appeal on all grounds therefore stands.
32. The anonymity order is continued.

D Sternberg

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

5 August 2025