Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-002719
UI-2025-002720
UI-2025-003157

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/62512/2024
LP/02588/2025

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 27th of January 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE O’BRIEN

Between

DE
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Schwenk of Counsel, instructed by WTB Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr McVitie, Senior Home Office presenting Officer

Heard at Manchester Civil Justice Centre on 3 November 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. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS

1. The appellant appeals against the decision of a judge of the First-tier Tribunal (the judge) allowing his appeal against the respondent’s decision dated 18 April 2024 on Article 8 grounds but dismissing his appeal on protection grounds. The respondent cross-appeals against the decision to allow the appellant’s appeal on Article 8 grounds.

2. The appellant had claimed to have an abusive, alcoholic father who physically abused him and his family, and to have been groomed by a criminal gang to deal drugs for them. He further claimed that, although he had managed to avoid doing so, he was at general risk from exploitation if returned to Albania. The respondent had not challenged the appellant’s account of events in Albania, expressly accepting that the appellant had an abusive father and that he had been approached to sell drugs, but argued that this did not demonstrate a real risk on return and that he would in any event have sufficiency of protection or alternatively could relocate internally.

3. The judge found the appellant’s account of events in Albania to be ‘limited in its credibility’ [34], although she restrained herself from going behind was she understood and was told by the presenting officer to be limited concessions. At [36], she ‘reject[ed] the factual basis for the asylum claim’. She consequently found the appellant not to be at risk on return [16]. In the alternative, the judge found that the appellant would have sufficiency of protection [44] and alternatively could relocate internally [39]. Nevertheless, the judge allowed the appeal on Article 8 grounds, finding that he faced very significant obstacles to integration [51].

4. The appellant appealed on four grounds: that the judge had failed to consider the general risk of future exploitation in Albania; that she had gone beyond the issues in dispute (in particular the credibility of the appellant’s account); that she had given inadequate reasons for her approach to the expert report; and that her finding on internal relocation was inconsistent with her conclusions under Article 8. Permission was granted by the First-tier Tribunal on ground 1 only. However, the Upper Tribunal subsequently granted permission to appeal on all grounds.

5. The respondent appealed on the sole ground that the judge had failed to give adequate reasons for finding that the appellant faced very significant obstacles to reintegration. Permission to appeal was granted by the First-tier Tribunal.

6. A transcript of proceedings was obtained by the appellant to support his argument that the judge had gone beyond the issues in dispute. Mr McVitie, having had an opportunity to consider that transcript shortly before the hearing conceded that the judge had indeed erred as alleged in ground 2. I find that to be a concession well made. Whilst the judge did make clear that she considered the respondent to have made only limited concessions and offered the appellant an opportunity to be cross-examined, she failed to deal properly with the appellant’s argument that, irrespective of the express concessions made, the respondent had not to that point made any criticism of the appellant’s credibility. She did not, therefore, consider whether it would be fair, let alone appropriate, to put credibility in general in issue.

7. Consequently, the judge’s decision on protection grounds involved the making of an error of law. Moreover, the parties agreed that the error was so fundamental that the decision to dismiss the appeal on protection grounds must be set aside. I also agree. The judge’s findings on sufficiency of protection are unsafe there having been unsafe findings on the existence and extent of an underlying risk. As for the judge’s findings in the alternative on internal relocation, they are inexplicably in tension with her finding that the appellant would face very significant obstacles to reintegration. At the very least, that tension had to be explained but was not.

8. Turning to the respondent’s challenge to the judge’s conclusions under Article 8, the grounds assert that she has failed to identify the mental health conditions she accepted he had or the impact those conditions had on the appellant’s ability to live independently. It was further asserted that the judge had failed to consider what benefit there had been from medication and counselling, or make findings on his prognosis, and had failed to consider whether the appellant would be able to live independently with the social assistance available to him as an Albanian national. Mr McVitie relied on those arguments.

9. Mr Schwenk submitted that the appellant’s mental health was not the sole reason for the judge’s finding of very significant obstacles; on the contrary, he submitted, it was a ‘make weight’. As it was, the judge had before her GP records and was entitled to make the findings she did on his mental. All in all, it was open to the judge to conclude that the appellant did indeed face very significant obstacles to reintegration into Albania.

10. Having found at [49] a number of factors in favour of reintegration, but at [50] that the appellant could not rely on support from his family, the judge drew together her conclusions on the issue at [51]:

11. The problem for the appellant is that, far from being a ‘make weight’, a lack of ‘assistance for his mental health’ is one of three matters specifically identified in the opening sentence as causing very significant obstacles. It comprises (at least implicitly) two findings: that the appellant has mental health difficulties for which he would need assistance; and that the necessary assistance is not available in Albania. These are both matters for the appellant to have proved on the balance of probability with evidence. However, beyond reference at [48] to letters from the appellant’s social worker and from the Chief Executive of Incio Group, and to the appellant's medical records, there is no other reference to evidence on first point and none to evidence on the second.

12. The medical records disclose no mental health diagnosis, but instead a trial of Sertraline (which it is agreed is an antidepressant, and of which the appellant was given a prescription for 28 days at 50mg per day) and the appellant being on the waiting list for cognitive behavioural therapy.

13. The judge simply fails adequately to explain why she was persuaded that this evidence established a state of mental health for which the appellant needed assistance in Albania, let alone whether such assistance would not be available, and yet further why an absence of such assistance would constitute materially to there being very significant obstacles. This is a material error of law such that the Article 8 conclusions cannot stand.

14. The parties agreed that, if I were persuaded to set aside the judge’s decision under Article 8, the matter should be remitted to the First-tier tribunal for a full rehearing with no facts found. Taking into account the principles set out in Begum (Remaking or remittal) Bangladesh [2023] UKUT 46 (IAC), I agree. No facts can be preserved. Moreover, given the conceded legal error in the protection appeal, remittal is necessary to afford the appellant properly the benefit of the two-tier appeal system.

Notice of Decision

1. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal involved the making of an error of law and is set aside.
2. The appeal is remitted to the First-tier Tribunal to be heard afresh by another judge with no facts preserved

Sean O’Brien

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

21 January 2026