Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2025-003410
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/59865/2023
LP/01488/2025

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

22nd May 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE NEVILLE

Between

BH
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr T Wilding, counsel instructed by AJ Jones Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr M Parvar, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 4 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 is an Albanian national who appeals the decision of the First-tier Tribunal (“FtT”) to dismiss her protection appeal. I continue the anonymity order made by the FtT, the integrity of the United Kingdom’s asylum system and the appellant’s status as a victim of trafficking justifying derogation from the principle of open justice.
Background
2. None of the following is in dispute. The appellant spent several years in an abusive relationship, eventually fleeing her abuser for France. She was unsuccessful in obtaining protection status in that country, so voluntarily returned to Albania. She confronted her abuser at her family home, but he denied the abuse and was believed by her parents who threw the appellant out of the house. After successfully ending the relationship, she later left Albania in 2019, having been promised a retail job in the Netherlands. Instead she was forced into sexual exploitation. Three months later, the man responsible ‘sold’ her to a different trafficker. He took her to Durrës in Albania, drugged and unconscious, where she was again forced into sex work. Many of her so-called clients were police officers. Towards the end of that year, the appellant took an opportunity to escape, and a woman she knew gave her €2,000 and helped her travel to the United Kingdom.
3. The appellant made a protection claim on 31 January 2020. Towards the end of 2021, while that claim was still pending, she gave birth to a son. The respondent refused the appellant’s claim on 2 November 2023 and the appeal against that decision was dismissed by the FtT.
The grounds of appeal
4. Permission to appeal was granted on six grounds, each challenging an aspect of the FtT’s decision. In summary, the appellant argues that:
a. Ground 1 – Failure to take account of all relevant evidence on risk on return
The FtT failed to assess risk holistically, focusing on the absence of corroboration for aspects of the appellant’s account and the passage of time since the trafficking, without engaging with material evidence said to bear on ongoing risk. That evidence included factors relating to vulnerability as an accepted victim of trafficking, evidence suggesting connections between the traffickers and police officers, the circumstances in which the appellant was transported across borders, and country material indicating the ease with which individuals may be traced in Albania.
b. Ground 2 – Misapplication of country guidance
The FtT confined its analysis to risk from the original traffickers and failed to assess risk in the round, including the risk of re-trafficking by others, by properly applying the factors identified in TD and AD (Trafficked women) (CG) [2016] UKUT 92 (IAC) relating to the appellant’s background, personal circumstances, and vulnerability to exploitation.
c. Ground 3 – Failure to consider the appellant’s vulnerabilities in the round
The FtT treated age as a decisive mitigating factor without adequate explanation and failed to properly consider other relevant factors, including the appellant’s status as a victim of trafficking, her position as a single mother, her mental health, and the absence of family support.
d. Ground 4 – Misapplication of country evidence
On two occasions within its analysis the FtT relied upon the policy summaries in the relevant Country Policy & Assessment Note (“CPIN”) as if they were neutral, incontrovertible factual positions rather than respondent’s evaluative stance. It therefore failed to engage with the appellant’s argument that there was contrary evidence on stigma, reintegration, and the availability and duration of support.
e. Ground 5 – Material error of fact
The FtT failed to take account of accepted aspects of the appellant’s account as they related to risk, including the breakdown of family support, the circumstances of her abuse, and the manner in which she was trafficked, including being drugged and transported.
f. Ground 6 – Inadequate reasoning / misdirection in relation to Article 8
The FtT treated the rejection of the protection claim as determinative of the Article 8 claim and failed to carry out a distinct assessment of whether there would be very significant obstacles to integration, including the impact of stigma, lack of support, and the appellant’s circumstances as a single mother.
5. Mr Parvar sensibly conceded that Ground 4 was made out in relation to one of the instances where the FtT relied on the CPIN, and that it erred by simply adopting the respondent’s policy without evaluating the evidence in order to decide the relevant matters for itself. I agree. At [54] the FtT held that:
54. According to the CPIN of July 2024, the available evidence indicates that the situation has improved for women and girls since TD and AD. Although stigma can be a concern for female victims of trafficking, there is support available from the government and civil society, which makes it possible for women to live alone in Tirana: see the July 2024 CPIN, para 5.1.6.
6. The FtT treated that availability of support as conclusive without addressing the appellant’s case to the contrary. This was an error of law.
7. Mr Parvar nonetheless argued that the error was immaterial to the final outcome, and that had the FtT approached the background evidence correctly, the same conclusions on the availability of support, reasonableness of internal relocation, and sufficiency of protection were inevitable.
8. Mr Wilding, who was not the grounds’ author, addressed them thematically. It convenient to do likewise in this decision. I record the representatives’ arguments only where necessary to explain my decision. As the grounds mount a challenge to the FtT’s findings of fact and their evaluation, I remind myself that appellate interference will only be justified if the FtT is plainly wrong: Volpi v Volpi [2022] EWCA Civ 464 at [2]; Clin v Walter Lilly & Co. Ltd [2021] EWCA Civ 136 at [83]-[86].
Consideration
9. Starting at [35], the FtT first addressed risk arising from the organised crime group (“OCG”) that had trafficked the appellant to Durrës. In arguing that the OCG had the ability and motivation to trace her in Albania, the appellant had relied on having been told by the woman who helped her leave that she had been tracked down and threatened by the trafficker. That person was unwilling to provide a witness statement, and the FtT was unwilling to treat such evidence as reliable in those circumstances.
10. The FtT then rejected any risk from the OCG due to the passage of time and further rejected any risk from the first trafficker – who had taken her to the Netherlands – as he had already ‘sold’ her to the OCG.
11. I agree with both criticisms levelled by Mr Wilding. The analysis omits aspects of the appellant’s trafficking put forward as establishing the OCG’s reach and motivation, such as its cross-border reach, ability to transport her from the Netherlands to Albania in the manner that it did, and that many of the men she saw in Durrës were police officers. The FtT further failed to explain why the first trafficker having ‘sold’ the appellant necessarily eliminated any continuing risk from him.
12. I further accept that risk from the OCG was rejected without any regard to the appellant’s own circumstances and characteristics. The relevant guidance in TD includes:
g) Re-trafficking is a reality. Whether that risk exists for an individual claimant will turn in part on the factors that led to the initial trafficking, and on her personal circumstances, including her background, age, and her willingness and ability to seek help from the authorities. For a proportion of victims of trafficking, their situations may mean that they are especially vulnerable to re-trafficking, or being forced into other exploitative situations.
h) Trafficked women from Albania may well be members of a particular social group on that account alone. Whether they are at risk of persecution on account of such membership and whether they will be able to access sufficiency of protection from the authorities will depend upon their individual circumstances including but not limited to the following:
1) The social status and economic standing of her family
2) The level of education of the victim of trafficking or her family
3) The victim of trafficking's state of health, particularly her mental health
4) The presence of an illegitimate child
5) The area of origin
6) Age
7) What support network will be available.
13. While aspects of the appellant’s vulnerability to re-trafficking were subsequently considered in relation to the risk of re-trafficking by others, this was only done after risk from the OCG had already been conclusively rejected; neither matter informing the other. The country guidance, and familiar principles of fact-finding in protection appeals, required the matters relevant to risk to be considered together in the round. I agree with Mr Wilding that the FtT impermissibly compartmentalised its analysis.
14. Mr Wilding made several criticisms of the FtT’s consideration of the relevant factors cited in the guidance. After addressing the appellant’s mental health, and making observations on the resilience and fortitude she had displayed during a time in her life that came before she was trafficked to the Netherlands and Durrës, the FtT held:
48. I accept that the presence of an illegitimate child will be a risk factor which increases the appellant’s vulnerability to exploitation, but a counterbalancing mitigating factor will be the appellant’s age. The appellant is aged 33 as of the date of the hearing. And by the time she would be due to leave a shelter with her son, she would be in her mid-30s. The target age for sexual exploitation is late teens or the early 20s.
15. The reference to the target age group comes from TD, in which by reference to a 27-year-old, the Tribunal said as follows:
152. We bear in mind Mr Whitwell's point that the target age group for traffickers is late teens/early twenties, and that this would reduce the risk presented to the first appellant. We have however also had regard to the figures in the UNP Needs Assessment. Approximately 20% of the VOTs that featured in that study, and in the NCATS annual report, had been re-trafficked having been through the shelters once before. We find that someone with the particular vulnerabilities that Dr Agnew-Davies has identified in the first appellant would be reasonably likely to fall within that group: we are satisfied that the least likely to be able to cope on their own will be the ones most likely to fall prey to the traffickers.
16. Mr Wilding made two arguments: first, that the FtT can be seen to expressly afford greater weight to the factor than can be justified by TD; and second, that such an error can alternatively be inferred from it having been treated as outweighing the other indicators of vulnerability that had been identified.
17. I reject the first argument. The FtT was plainly entitled to treat the appellant’s age as reducing the likelihood that she would be targeted, and nothing in its express treatment of the factor discloses an error. The second argument has more merit, and it is somewhat difficult to see how the appellant’s age outweighed the more cursory, or occasionally only inferred, consideration of her other circumstances. Were this point made in isolation, I would reject that it discloses an error of law: an appellate tribunal must avoid “island hopping”. The same can be said of the surprising weight afforded by the FtT to the appellant’s success in ending her previous abusive relationship, which of course came before she was trafficked across borders by an organised criminal gang for sexual exploitation.
18. The above points must not, of course, be taken in isolation. What matters is whether the FtT conducted the holistic assessment of risk required by TD. I am satisfied it did not. The FtT approached the risk of re-trafficking by compartmentalising and rejecting any risk from the OCG, and on a premise that the appellant could access a shelter without having evaluated her evidence to the contrary. That is an error of law. While I acknowledge the detail with which Mr Parvar argued that the same findings would have inevitable, in light of the other criticisms that can justifiably be made of its analysis I disagree; it simply cannot be said that no properly self-directed Tribunal could find that the appellant would be at risk on return.
19. I accordingly allow the appeal on grounds 1, 2, 4 and 5. I need not address Article 8, which depends on establishing the correct factual position on return.
Disposal
20. The FtT’s decision is set aside. It is unnecessary to preserve any facts. The appellant’s pre-flight account was, so far as is relevant, accepted by the respondent before the FtT. An exception is whether the woman who helped the appellant was actually tracked down and threatened by the OCG. The FtT’s treatment of the evidence at [36] cannot be severed from the remainder of its findings on risk and is likewise set aside; the issue remains at large.
21. The representatives were agreed that in the present circumstances the appeal should be remitted to the First-tier Tribunal. I agree, further fact-finding will be required according to updated evidence of the appellant’s circumstances and country conditions, and in all the circumstances the appellant should retain the benefit of the usual two-tier appellate structure.
Notice of Decision
(i) The decision of the First-tier Tribunal involved the making of an error of law and is set aside.
(ii) The case is remitted to a differently constituted First-tier Tribunal for re-hearing with no facts preserved.

J Neville

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

22 May 2026