Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case Nos: UI-2025-003857,
UI-2025-003860 & UI-2025-003861

First-tier Tribunal Nos: EA/00305/2025,
EA/00306/2025 & EA/00307/2025

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 2 August 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE KEBEDE

Between

MISBAH SHARIF
AYESHA QADOOS
ABDUL HASEEB
Appellants
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Qumar Sharif, the Sponsor
For the Respondent: Mr N Wain, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Manchester Civil Justice Centre on 27 July 2026

DECISION AND REASONS

1. This is the re-making of the decision in the appellants’ appeals, following the setting aside of the decision of the First-tier Tribunal which had dismissed the appeals against the respondent’s decisions to refuse their applications for EEA Family Permits under the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2016.

2. The appellants are nationals of Pakistan, born on 8 September 1980, 25 March 2008 and 10 February 2009 respectively. The first appellant is the mother of the second and third appellants. They applied, on 24 November 2019, for EEA Family Permits as the extended family members of Qunar Sharif, the first appellant’s brother and the uncle of the two children. Mr Sharif is an Italian national living in the UK since November 2018. The first appellant claims that she and her husband, the father of her children, are separated and that the only income she receives comes from the sponsor. It is claimed that she has been receiving support from the sponsor since December 2017 and that he was supporting her when he lived in Italy and thereafter once he had moved to the UK.

3. The respondent refused the appellants’ applications, in decisions dated 18 December 2019, on the grounds that she was not satisfied that the appellants were financially dependent on their sponsor and, as such, she was not satisfied that they were family members in accordance with Regulation 8 of the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2016. That was because they had failed to provide sufficient evidence to show that they were financially dependent on the sponsor. The respondent noted that the appellants had produced thirteen money transfer remittance receipts dated between 25 December 2017 and 2 December 2019 and was not satisfied that that evidence in isolation was sufficient to prove financial dependence. The respondent noted that the appellants had not provided any evidence of their own financial situation, and they had not provided any evidence to show that the property owned by the sponsor where thy claimed to live was their main residence. The respondent considered that an employer’s letter upon which the appellants relied as evidence of the sponsor’s wife’s employment had a number of spelling and grammatical errors and was not satisfied that it was a genuine letter issued by the company. As such, without additional supporting evidence, the letter had not been considered further in regard to the sponsor’s ability to financially support the appellants. The respondent noted that the sponsor was also listed on the applications of one direct dependent family member, and four other extended family members, all of whom claimed to be financially dependent upon him and, as such, the respondent was not satisfied that it was sustainable for the sponsor to also financially support the appellants. The respondent considered there to be a risk that the appellants may become a burden on the public funds system of this country.

4. The appellants appealed against the respondent’s decisions. Their appeals came before the First-tier Tribunal on 27 May 2025 and were determined on the papers by the First-tier Tribunal Judge, as no oral hearing had been requested. The judge confirmed that he had taken all the documentary evidence into account. He considered that the issue referred to by the respondent in the refusal decisions, of the sponsorship by the sponsor of up to five other family members, had not been addressed by the sponsor or by the first appellant during the appeal process. The judge considered that if five other individuals received the support of the sponsor, that brought into doubt whether the sponsor, even with financial support from his wife, could fulfil the obligations if the three appellants were admitted to the United Kingdom. The judge accordingly dismissed the appeals.

5. The appellants sought, and were granted, permission to appeal the judge’s decision to the Upper Tribunal on the ground that, contrary to the judge’s comments, the issue of the apparent sponsorship of up to five other family members was addressed by the first appellant at paragraph 11 of her witness statement and it was arguable that the judge did not engage with the evidence on the issue. It was also found to be arguable that the judge failed to address the central question in the appeal, namely whether the appellants were dependant on the EEA sponsor at the relevant time, but rather focussed solely on the sponsor supporting multiple family members. In addition it was found to be arguable that the judge did not adequately reason his conclusion that the appellants did not meet the requirements of the Immigration (EEA) Regulations 2016.

6. The respondent opposed the appeal, in a rule 24 response.

7. The matter then came before the Upper Tribunal, sitting as a panel, on 5 December 2025. There was no appearance for the appellants and the judges made their decision on the basis of submissions from the Home Office Presenting Officer, Dr Ibisi, and the papers before them.

8. In a decision promulgated on 7 January 2026 the Upper Tribunal found there to be material errors of law in the First-tier Tribunal Judge’s decision and accordingly set it aside.

9. The relevant part of the Upper Tribunal’s decision is set out as follows:

“Analysis

Ground One

10. The first ground advanced by the appellants was the Judge’s putative failure to consider the evidence provided in their bundle. We have no hesitation in concluding that the Judge did indeed take into account the evidence provided by the appellants.

11. At [2] of his decision, the Judge makes reference to having access to the files and folders on Microsoft Teams and specifically mentions ‘documents filed by the appellants and on behalf of the respondent’.

12. At [5], the Judge notes ‘the appellants provided documentary evidence in the course of these appeals’ and confirms at [7] that ‘all aspects of the documentary evidence are taken into account, whether or not superficially referred to hereafter’.

13. It is clear in our judgment that the Judge did take into account the evidence which had been provided by the appellants. We therefore find that ground one is not made out, and there is no error of law in this respect.

Grounds Two and Three

14. Whilst the second and third grounds are pleaded discretely, they are in effect the same challenge, i.e. that the Judge failed to engage with the evidence before him and did not provide adequate reasons for his finding that the appellants were not dependent upon the sponsor.

15. The Judge details the question that he was to resolve at [6]. The issue in dispute between the parties was whether the appellants had shown, on the balance of probabilities, that they were dependent upon the sponsor. In support of their appeals, the appellants had provided evidence of the income of their sponsor and his wife in the United Kingdom. The documentary evidence before the Judge also included money transfer receipts, proof of the appellants’ residence in a house said to be owned by the sponsor, as well as affidavits of dependency and receipts for expenditure by the appellants.

16. As the grounds identify, the Judge made no reference at any of this evidence in his consideration of the question of dependency. The task before the Judge can be summarised with reference to Budhathoki (reasons for decisions) [2014] UKUT 00341 (IAC); that it is ‘necessary for First-tier Tribunal judges to identify and resolve the key conflicts in the evidence and explain in clear and brief terms their reasons for preferring one case to the other so that the parties can understand why they have won or lost’ [14].

17. In the instant appeal, there was no consideration given to the evidence provided by the appellants. There were a number of points raised by the respondent in the refusal which were not resolved by the Judge. We do not know whether the Judge accepted the evidence given by the appellants that they lived in a house owned by the sponsor. We also do not know whether or not the Judge took the income of the sponsor’s wife into account, against the background of the respondent’s concerns about her employment evidence. A fair reading of the decision would not disclose to the appellants why they had ‘lost’ their appeals.

18. The point the Judge did take into account when determining the appeals was the sponsor’s ability to support the appellants financially when he had been identified by the respondent as the sponsor of another five family members. Whilst this point clearly has a bearing upon the sponsor’s ability to provide for the essential needs of the appellants, especially in light of what appears to be a limited income, it was not evidenced before the Judge.

19. As we raised with Dr Ibisi at the hearing, the respondent did not evidence the assertion made in the refusal decisions about the sponsor’s role in these other applications. The Judge was not provided with the names of the family members, nor was he provided with the outcome of the applications, nor any information about whether the family members were still being supported by the sponsor at the time the appellants made their applications.

20. The evidence before the Judge included the first appellant’s witness statement where she detailed the fact that another one of her brothers, Amir Sharif, had entered the United Kingdom in late 2019 and had ‘joined’ the sponsor. It was also asserted that he was now contributing to the sponsor’s household. If Mr Sharif was one of the five family members the respondent was concerned with, clearly this would be one less person the sponsor was supporting at the time of the applications.

21. The Judge did not engage with this evidence at all. Accordingly, we are satisfied that the Judge did not provide adequate reasons for his finding that the appellants were not dependent upon the sponsor. We find there was a material error of law, such that the decision should be set aside.”

10. Directions were given for the decision in the appeal to be re-made at a resumed hearing, and for the filing and service of further evidence for the hearing. It was noted that Dr Ibisi had since provided further information on the applications made by the sponsor’s family members and had confirmed that the sponsor’s wife Fahmeeda Shakrullah, and two of his daughters Munahal Qumar and Saba Qumar, were granted settled status and now resided at the same address as the sponsor. In a response to directions made by the Upper Tribunal in their decision, Dr Ibisi also confirmed that the sponsor’s daughters had since obtained British citizenship and that the five applications previously sponsored by the same sponsor, as relied upon by the First-tier Tribunal Judge, in fact related to the sponsor’s wife and two daughters.

11. On 29 May 2026 further directions were issued by the Upper Tribunal confirming that the appeal was not suitable for determination on the papers and that the hearing would be listed for an oral hearing. The appellants were directed to file and serve a composite bundle containing the evidence previously relied upon in the First-tier Tribunal as well as any further evidence which was to be relied upon at the hearing before the Upper Tribunal, together with any relevant Rule 15(2A) application to rely on additional evidence.

12. In response to the directions, the appellants produced a skeleton argument and a consolidated bundle for the appeal. The bundle did not contain any Rule 15(2A) application and neither did it contain any additional evidence.

Hearing and Submissions

13. The case came before me on 27 July 2026, to re-make the decision in the appeals. As agreed, the only issue to be determined was whether the appellants were dependent upon the sponsor for their essential living needs.

14. The sponsor gave oral evidence before me through an interpreter in the Urdu language. The interpreter confirmed that they understood one another and I was entirely satisfied that that was the case. I sought initially to confirm the address of the sponsor and the appellants, given that successive notices of hearing had been returned undelivered from the address of both. The sponsor advised me of a change of address for himself but said that the appellants remained living in the family home as they always had. I asked the sponsor if there was any further evidence relied upon aside from the 141 page bundle that was before the First-tier Tribunal and he said that there was none. I asked him why there was no updated evidence and he said that he did not believe that any extra was needed.

15. The sponsor was cross-examined by Mr Wain. The sponsor confirmed that he was sending money to his sister when he was living in Italy from 2017 to 2018. When asked by Mr Wain why there were no bank statements from that period, he said that he transferred money through a private transfer agency. He would withdraw cash from his bank account and pay cash to the money transfer agency. The sponsor confirmed that all the money he sent to his sister was through cash transfer and that the amount differed every month depending on what she needed. Mr Wain showed the sponsor some of the cash transfer receipts in the consolidated bundle and the corresponding periods in the bank statements and asked why there were no corresponding withdrawals shown from his bank account, and the sponsor replied that he may have made the withdrawal earlier. When asked why he had produced bank statements for July, August and October2019 but not September 2019, the sponsor said that he must have missed it out by mistake. He denied Mr Wain’s suggestion that he had deliberately missed out statements showing periods correlating to the money transfers. He also denied Mr Wain’s suggestion that it was not him who was providing the money to his sister and he said that there was no one else providing for her. When asked if it was possible that his brother Amir was the one who was providing the money, the sponsor said that his brother would help him with housing costs but he would send money to his sister. When asked why the Ria money transfers only showed the currency in Pakistani rupees, the sponsor said that the receipts were from Pakistan and showed the money received there. He did not have the receipts for the money sent as he did not think he would need them. When asked by Mr Wain why there was such limited evidence showing what were his sister’s essential needs, the sponsor said that she sent whatever she had. When asked why he had only provided evidence of sending money up to 2019 and nothing more recent, the sponsor said that he had provided whatever he had but he could produce more if needed. He said that his sister was totally dependent upon him and lived in his house.

16. Mr Wain made submissions before me. He submitted that the appellant and sponsor had not adequately evidenced, to the required standard, that money was being sent over to his sister, and that if it was, it was being used for her essential needs. There was limited evidence to show money transfers going from the sponsor and being received by the first appellant. The source of the money and the chain linking the sponsor to the transfers was not established. There were no bank statements from Italy to corroborate the transfers from 2017 to 2018 and the cash transfers from the UK showed cash being paid on a certain date which did not correlate to any payments in the sponsor’s bank account. Mr Wain gave some specific examples from the evidence. The evidence did not therefore support the sponsor’s oral evidence that cash was used from him to support the appellant. There was also a lack of evidence of the appellant’s essential needs, which in turn suggested that she was receiving an income from other sources. There was no evidence from after 2019. The appeal should be dismissed.

17. In response, the sponsor said that there was no one else supporting his sister aside from him. He said that it was not always the case that his sister received a receipt for things bought for her essential needs and so that was a reason why there was limited evidence.

Analysis

18. I agree with Mr Wain that the evidence in this case falls well short of demonstrating that the appellants were and are dependent upon the sponsor for their essential needs. As stated by the respondent in the refusal decisions, the evidence produced by the first appellant with her application consisted of 13 money transfer remittance receipts dated 25 December 2017, 10 January 2018, 27 March 2018, 12 April 2018, 05 May 2018, 30 July 2018, 20 September 2018, 24 December 2018, 20 January 2019, 11 July 2019, 25 July 2019, 30 October 2019 and 02 December 2019, with no evidence of her own financial situation and with no evidence that the property gifted to the sponsor from their father was the property in which she and her children lived as their main residence. Although further evidence was produced for the appeal before the First-tier Tribunal, that evidence was limited, and nothing further has been produced for the appeal before me. The evidence relied upon to demonstrate financial dependency only covers the period from December 2017 to November 2019, when the application was made, with nothing further thereafter.

19. With regard to the money remittance receipts for the period from December 2017 to November 2019, which are said to include the period in which the sponsor resided in Italy until relocating to the UK in November 2018, there is a mixture of receipts from MoneyGram and Ria, the two agencies the sponsor said that he had used to send money to his sister. However, as Mr Wain submitted, although the sponsor is named as the sender in the receipts and the receipts refer to the funds having come from Italy or the UK, the receipts only show the funds received in Pakistan. There are no corresponding receipts for the payments sent to show that the sponsor was confirmed, by way of identification, as being the sender of the funds. The sponsor has provided his Barclays bank statements, but they do not go anyway near to evidencing that the funds shown as received by the beneficiary in Pakistan came from his bank account. The bank statements only cover a period of May 2019 to November 2019 and they do not show cash withdrawals which correspond to the funds received by the appellant in Pakistan. Whilst I accept that it need not necessarily be demonstrated that cash was withdrawn from the sponsor’s bank account on the exact same day as the funds were received in Pakistan, or that the exact same amount was withdrawn as that received in local currency in Pakistan, there ought at least to be some correlation between funds withdrawn and those received in Pakistan. However there is not, either by way of the dates or the amount of funds. It would require complete speculation to accept that the cash withdrawals shown on the sponsor’s bank statements include funds shown as received by the beneficiary in the remittance receipts. Given the overall unsatisfactory nature of the evidence I am not able to undertake such speculation. There is no satisfactory explanation for the absence of reliable evidence of the transfer of funds. The appellants and sponsor have had plenty of opportunity to provide the relevant evidence and have not done so. That in itself raises doubts as to the reliability of the assertions made about the dependency.

20. The appellants claim that it is sufficient, in itself, to show that they remain living in the sponsor’s accommodation in order to demonstrate dependency upon the sponsor, in accordance with the guidance in Dauhoo (EEA Regulations - reg 8(2)) Mauritius ([2012] UKUT 79. Dauhoo was, however, a case where the appellants had since come to the UK and were living with the sponsor in the UK. Furthermore, the evidence does not show membership of the sponsor’s household prior to him coming to the UK. The evidence is that the first appellant was married to the father of her children and is now separated, and it is reasonable to assume in such circumstances, that she would have lived in her husband’s household previously. The police certificate stating that the address was the first appellant’s place of residence since birth is therefore misleading. There is an absence of information as to where the appellants lived during the marriage, with no information being provided in her affidavit or statement. I note that the letters from the children’s schools are dated May 2025 and it is therefore unclear from those letters when they started living in the property now said to be owned by the sponsor. In the circumstances I give little weight to the letters from the school and the police certificate as evidencing dependency upon the sponsor. There is, in addition, no evidence to show that the appellants currently reside in the sponsor’s property. As I mentioned to the sponsor, the notices of hearing sent to the appellants at the given address in November 2025 have been returned undelivered to the Tribunal. In the circumstances I do not accept that the appellants’ living circumstances have been reliably explained.

21. Aside from the above points, the appellants have failed to provide evidence of their financial circumstances and situation so as to evidence their need for financial support to cover their essential needs. It is claimed that they are entirely dependent upon the sponsor, given the first appellant’s separation from her husband and his inability to provide for the family in any event. However there is no evidence to show that they are separated or divorced and no evidence to show that he is not supporting the family. There is no evidence of their household income and expenditure. The first appellant has produced a few receipts for purchases of groceries between January to September 2019. Not only is that outdated evidence, with nothing more recent, but it does not show the extent of the appellant’s household expenditure and neither does it suggest a lack of ability to meet the payments for her essential needs and those of her children. As mentioned above, the appellant has had plenty of opportunity to provide evidence in support of her appeal. The refusal letter makes it very clear what evidence was lacking and what was required. Nothing further has been produced. In the absence of any reliable documentary evidence, and any credible explanation for the lack of such evidence, I am not prepared to accept the sponsor’s simple assertion that his sister is wholly dependent upon him.

22. For all these reasons I do not accept that the appellants have provided reliable evidence of their financial and living circumstances so as to demonstrate dependency upon the sponsor. They have failed to show that they are dependent upon the sponsor for their essential living needs, either wholly or partly. They are accordingly unable to meet the eligibility requirements for an EEA family permit under the 2016 Regulations. The respondent’s decision was in accordance with the Regulations. The appellants’ appeals therefore fail.

DECISION

23. The making of the decision of the First-tier Tribunal having been set aside, the decision is re-made by the appellants’ appeals being dismissed.

Signed: S Kebede
Upper Tribunal Judge Kebede

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

27 July 2026