Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-003384

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/63774/2023

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 24th of November 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BLUNDELL

Between

DA
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Jennifer Lanigan, instructed by Virgo Solicitors
For the Respondent: Benjamin Hulme, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 19 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.

This order continues the anonymity direction which was made in the First-tier Tribunal on account of the fact that the appellant is an asylum seeker and an accepted victim of trafficking. His need for anonymity outweighs the presumption in favour of open justice.

DECISION AND REASONS

1. The appellant appeals with the permission of the First-tier Tribunal against the decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Cary. By his decision, the judge dismissed the appellant’s appeal against the refusal of his application for international protection.

Background

2. The appellant is an Albanian national who was born on 7 November 2003. He arrived in the United Kingdom as an Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Child and claimed asylum on 11 March 2019, aged 15. He was interviewed in connection with his claim shortly after he turned eighteen. The respondent referred the appellant to the Single Competent Authority because his claim revealed indicators of trafficking. On 10 August 2023, he was accepted on conclusive grounds to be a victim of trafficking. On 2 November 2023, however, the respondent refused to grant leave on that basis and, on 22 November 2023, she refused to grant refugee status.

3. I am able to take the following summary of the appellant’s claim directly from [20]-[21] the judge’s decision:

The Appellant asserts that his removal from the United Kingdom would be contrary to the Refugee Convention as he claims that he has a well-founded fear of persecution from the criminals (led by [X]) who forced him to work cultivating cannabis in Albania in 2017 and 2018. He claims that when he travelled with his father to Greece to visit family in October 2018 the cannabis farm was raided by the Albanian police in his absence and that as a result [X] and his gang wrongly believed that he had informed the police of their activities and began looking for him. In his asylum interview he confirmed he was still afraid of [X] who had been violent to him in the past as a result of which he was hospitalised and that after the police raid [X] and his gang told his neighbour what had happened, that they held the Appellant responsible for informing on them and that he owed them 200,000 euros. The Appellant said that if he returned to Albania he would be killed.

He also said in his asylum interview that when his father and himself returned from Greece they stayed in Shkoder in Albania for a month (where his father had a nightclub “thing”) before travelling to Podgorica (which I understand is in Montenegro). He confirmed in evidence that this was after his conversation with his neighbour who had told him about the police raid and [X]’s reaction to it. He said that his father and himself then travelled to Belgium where they stayed for a “couple of months” as his father (who is a musician) was working in a nightclub. His father then returned to Albania for a few days for a wedding and during his absence the Appellant made arrangements to come to the UK with someone he knew from school. He said that since travelling to Greece he had not had any contact with [X] or his gang. He also said that if returned he would not be able to rely on the police for protection as he had seen them with the gang “shaking hands, hugging and speaking they were best friends.”

The Appeal to the First-tier Tribunal

4. The hearing before the FtT took place on 28 March 2025. The appellant was represented by Ms Lanigan of counsel, as he was before me. The respondent was represented by a Presenting Officer (not Mr Hulme). The judge received a considerable amount of documentary evidence, including statements from the appellant’s father and uncle, an expert report about the appellant’s claim from Dr James Korovilas and an expert report about his mental health from Dr Khan. The judge heard oral evidence from the appellant, who he treated as a vulnerable witness, before hearing submissions from the representatives and reserving his decision.

5. The judge’s reserved decision was issued on 31 March 2025. It is a lengthy decision which was clearly the product of considerable thought and work. It spans twenty pages of single-spaced type and has a total of 65 paragraphs. For present purposes, however, it is only necessary to provide an outline of the essential conclusions reached by the judge.

6. At [24]-[28], the judge concluded that the appellant’s claim was one that engaged the Refugee Convention, and rejected the contrary assertion by the respondent. At [44], the judge accepted in light of what he was told by the Presenting Officer that the appellant was the victim of modern slavery in Albania. At [59], however, for the reasons he had given in the preceding paragraphs, the judge concluded that “it is not reasonably likely that the appellant will be at risk from his original traffickers on his return to Albania.” He went on to express the conclusions that the appellant could turn to the Albanian authorities for assistance, and that “internal relocation may also be an option”. It was for those reasons that he decided to dismiss the appeal.

The Appeal to the Upper Tribunal

7. Permission to appeal was sought by Ms Lanigan on four grounds, all of which were considered to be arguable by the Resident Judge who granted permission to appeal. As Ms Lanigan recognised before me, there is a degree of overlap between the grounds. As pleaded, however, they were as follows:

Ground One – the judge failed to consider material matters or failed to give adequate reasons for his findings on credibility and for his rejection of Dr Korovilas’ conclusions.

Ground Two – the hearing was vitiated by procedural impropriety, in that various matters of concern were not put to the appellant.

Ground Three – the judge left material matters out of account in considering the future risk to the appellant or the judge’s reasoning was inconsistent.

Ground Four – the judge left material matters out of account or provided insufficient reasons for concluding that the appellant would receive a sufficiency of protection.

8. The Secretary of State filed a concise response to the grounds of appeal on 4 August 2025, in which she did not accept that the judge had erred in any of the respects contended for in the grounds of appeal.

9. The consolidated bundle which was filed in advance of the hearing contains Ms Lanigan’s contemporaneous notes of the hearing in the FtT. Mr Hulme confirmed at the outset of the hearing that those notes were not contested, and that there was no difficulty with Ms Lanigan appearing before me in accordance with Abdi v ECO [2023] EWCA Civ 1455, at [25].

10. I heard clear and well-focused submissions from Ms Lanigan and Mr Hulme. I will not rehearse those submissions in my decision; I will instead refer to them in reaching the conclusions below.

Discussion

11. In evaluating the decision of the FtT, I have in mind that it is a specialist tribunal and that its judges should be taken to know the law. I have also borne in mind the guidance on appellate restraint which has been made clear in a number of decisions of the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, including Perry v Raleys Solicitors [2020] AC 352, at [49]-[51], per Lord Briggs.

12. Despite the caution which I have therefore exercised in considering the findings of fact reached by the judge, I have come to the clear conclusion that those findings of fact are vitiated by the following errors of law.

13. Firstly, as contended in ground three, in reaching the critical conclusion at [59] (that the gang were no longer interested in pursuing the appellant), the judge erred in failing to apply the law.

14. Paragraph 339K of the Immigration Rules and the Court of Appeal’s decision in Demirkaya v SSHD [1999] Imm AR 498 required the judge to proceed on the basis that past persecution is to be regarded as a serious indication of the person's well-founded fear of persecution or real risk of suffering serious harm, unless there are good reasons to consider that such persecution or serious harm will not be repeated. As Sedley LJ said at [16] of PS (Sri Lanka) v SSHD [2008] EWCA Civ 1213, past experience occupies a central role as a guide to future risk. As Mr Hulme was constrained to accept before me, however, there is no reference to paragraph 339K in the decision of the First-tier Tribunal, nor is there any indication that the judge applied that principle in reaching the conclusion that the appellant would no longer be at risk.

15. Secondly, as contended in ground one, the judge failed to give adequate reasons for rejecting conclusions reached by Dr Korovilas, the appellant’s country expert.

16. Ms Lanigan sought initially to present this as a complaint that the judge had failed to have regard to material parts of the expert report but, as Mr Hulme submitted, it is difficult to accept that submission when regard is had to the extensive references to Dr Korovilas’ report in this detailed decision. I need not set out those references here, but it is entirely clear that the judge was well aware of what had been said by the expert. If ever there was a case in which one should apply the presumption that a trial judge has taken the whole of the evidence into account (Volpi v Volpi [2022] 4 WLR 48, at [2](iii)), this is it.

17. Ms Lanigan therefore pivoted so as to rely on the alternative way in which this complaint was pleaded in her grounds of appeal. She submitted that the judge had failed to give adequate reasons for rejecting certain conclusions reached by the expert. Mr Hulme accepted in his submissions that the law in that respect remains as set out by Stanley Burnton LJ in SS (Sri Lanka) v SSHD [2012] EWCA Civ 155:

Generally speaking, the weight, if any, to be given to expert (or indeed any) evidence is a matter for the trial judge (here Senior Immigration Judge Spencer). A judge's decision not to accept expert evidence does not involve an error of law on his part, provided he approaches that evidence with appropriate care and gives good reasons for his decision.

18. The difficulty in this case, as Ms Lanigan very capably demonstrated, is that the judge gave no reasons for rejecting certain opinions expressed by the expert. This was not a case in which the judge expressed any overarching concern about the expert, or his methodology, and the judge did not state, for example, that he was prepared to attach no or even limited weight to the expert report. At [56], the judge stated that it was “difficult to accept that those who trafficked the appellant would have continued to make efforts to trace him for well over five years after his departure from Belgium”. He expressed similar concerns at [58] and, at [63], the judge considered there to be “no evidence that his traffickers would have any interest in locating him if he moved elsewhere even assuming they had the ability to do so.”

19. In reaching those conclusion, however, the judge gave no reasons for rejecting what was said by Dr Korovilas at p9 of his report, under the emboldened sub-heading “Reasons why it is plausible that this criminal gang may wish to re-capture [DA]”. Those reasons were essentially rooted in money and revenge, and Dr Korovilas cited an Open Society Foundation report from 2016 in support of his conclusion that the appellant “faces a genuine risk of being either captured or otherwise harmed by the criminal gang that had previously forced him to work for them”. The judge was not obliged to accept those opinions but he was obliged to explain why he had rejected them.

20. Thirdly, as contended in ground two, the judge’s central conclusion that the gang no longer presented a risk to the appellant was vitiated by procedural impropriety, in that the judge expressed doubt about aspects of the appellant’s account when those matters were not put to the appellant at the hearing.

21. There is, as I have already mentioned, a clear record of the questions asked of the appellant in chief, cross-examination and by the judge. As Mr Hulme accepted, it is quite clear from that record that no questions were asked of the appellant about inconsistencies between his own account and the account given by his father in his short statement; the conflicting accounts the appellant had given about his location on return to Albania from Greece; and any conflict in the evidence as to the number of gang members who had been arrested.

22. Ms Lanigan referred in support of this submission to what Popplewell LJ said about when a failure to raise a point at a hearing amounts to procedural unfairness at [28]-[33] of Abdi v ECO. She also submitted that there was a heightened duty to put these matters to the appellant in the present case, given that he was accepted to be a vulnerable witness who was describing events which had all occurred when he was a child, as to which I recall what was said about the proper approach to the evidence of children at [38]-[42] of AA (Afghanistan) v SSHD [2012] UKUT 00016 (IAC).

23. Mr Hulme accepted that these matters had not been canvassed with the appellant at the hearing. He accepted that this amounted to a procedural failing on the part of the judge but submitted, if I understood him correctly, that any such failing was immaterial in light of the other conclusions which the judge had reached. I do not accept that submission. Each of the matters to which I have alluded immediately above went to support the judge’s ultimate conclusion that the appellant would not currently be at risk from the gang. If, as Mr Hulme accepted, it was procedurally improper to take those points against the appellant without providing him with an opportunity to answer them, the ultimate conclusion which the judge reached must be vitiated by that procedural impropriety.

24. Fourthly, as contended in ground four, the judge failed to explain in his decision why he preferred the respondent’s country evidence over the opinions proffered by Dr Korovilas. The respondent’s Country Information and Policy Note (CPIN) is, as the name suggests, split into two sections. The first sets out the respondent’s policy in respect of that country, including guidance on whether certain types of claim might, for example, be certified as clearly unfounded under section 94 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. The second part contains a review of the background evidence on the country. In this case, much of the judge’s assessment was based on the former section rather than the latter. Ms Lanigan’s principal complaint, however, was that in various paragraphs of the judge’s decision (she identified [46], [47], [51], [62] and [63] in particular), the judge had based his conclusions as to risk on what was said in parts of the CPIN, without giving any reasons for rejecting what was said by Dr Korovilas or elsewhere

25. Ms Lanigan gave five specific examples of this error. It suffices to mention two.

26. At [59], the judge concluded that there was “no reason why the appellant should not be able to approach the police for help…” but that conclusion was reached without the judge attempting to reconcile it with: (i) the appellant’s evidence that the police and the traffickers were known to each other; (ii) the material highlighted in the CPIN which showed the extent of corruption; and (iii) the report of Dr Korovilas, which explained why that corruption might prevent this appellant receiving protection. There were various reasons why the appellant should not be able to approach the police for help, therefore, and the judge did not explain why he had rejected those reasons.

27. The judge concluded at [62] that it was “not reasonably likely he will suffer any society led stigma particularly as he was not trafficked for sexual exploitation”. That conclusion was at odds with parts of the CPIN which were drawn to the judge’s attention in the skeleton argument before the FtT, which showed that stigma is particularly but not exclusively directed towards those who had been trafficked for sexual exploitation.

28. It follows that each of the grounds of appeal is made out and the decision of the First-tier Tribunal is vitiated by errors of law such that it must be set aside as a whole. Given that I have accepted the procedural fairness point made at ground two, the proper course is for the appeal to be remitted to the First-tier Tribunal for hearing afresh by a judge other than Judge Cary: AEB v SSHD [2022] EWCA Civ 1512; [2023] 4 WLR 12 refers.

Notice of Decision

The appeal is allowed. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal is set aside. The appeal is remitted to be heard afresh in the First-tier Tribunal by a different judge.

Mark Blundell

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

19 November 2025