Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-004759, UI-2025-004761,
UI-2025-004762 and UI-2025-004763

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/04679/2024,
PA/04680/2024, PA/04681/2024 and
PA/04682/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 19th February 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE SHERIDAN
DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE RICHARDS

Between

A1
A2
A3
A4
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr K Wood
For the Respondent: Dr S Ibisi, senior presenting officer

Heard at Field House on 6 February 2026

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellants are granted anonymity.

No-one shall publish or reveal any information, including the name or address of the appellants, likely to lead members of the public to identify the appellants. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS

Introduction and procedural history

1. A1 (“the Appellant”) along with her children A2, A3, and A4 are appealing with permission the decision of the First-tier Tribunal signed on 16 July 2025 to reject their appeal against the decision of the Respondent dated 19 November 2024 refusing their claims made on 12 March 2023 for asylum, humanitarian protection, and permission to stay on private or family life grounds. A1, A2, A3, and A4 are all making their claims on the same basis.

2. We note that an anonymity order was made by the First-tier Tribunal, and that the Appellants have made an asylum application and we continue the anonymity order in this case. In doing so we have had regard to Guidance Note 2022 No.2: Anonymity Orders and Hearings in Private and Kambadzi v SSHD [2011] UKSC 23. We have considered the strong public interest in open justice. Nonetheless, in this case it is outweighed by the United Kingdom’s obligations towards applicants for international protection.

3. The Appellant is a citizen of Botswana and claims that she and her children would be at risk on return due to domestic abuse from her ex-husband, and also that her 2 daughters are at risk of FGM. She argues that sufficiency of protection is not available, internal relocation would be unduly harsh, and that she and the children would face very significant obstacles to relocation.

4. The Appellant gave evidence before the First-tier Tribunal and was represented by Mr Wood. At that hearing the Respondent was representing by Ms Chowdhury, a presenting officer. The First-tier Tribunal Judge (“the Judge”) recorded in their decision that at the outset of the hearing Mr Wood asked him to treat the Appellant as vulnerable and thus phrase questions appropriately and offer breaks. The Judge recorded that he implemented those requests.

5. The judge found that the Appellant was not credible and he was satisfied that the Appellant “has sought to invent a story to create a risk” [27]. He found that A1, A2, A3, and A4 are not at risk if returned to Botswana, not in need of humanitarian protection, and that “any interference with the Article 8 rights of the Appellant and her children is minimal and is outweighed by the public interest considerations” [40].

6. The Appellant applied for permission to appeal this decision and in a decision dated 24 September 2025, a different First-tier Tribunal Judge from the one who made the initial decision dated 16 July 2025, gave permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal. She said that it was “arguable that the judge failed to apply the Joint Presidential Guidance Note No 2 of 2010 in his assessment of the appellant’s credibility”, although she did not limit permission to that particular ground.

7. The Upper Tribunal hearing took place via CVP before us on 6 February 2026. We considered a bundle of 207 pages and heard representations from Mr Wood on behalf of A1, A2, A3, and A4; and from Dr Ibisi on behalf of the Respondent.

8. The bundle contains a Rule 15 application for the Upper Tribunal to accept extra evidence consisting of contemporaneous medical evidence pertaining to the Appellant. Mr Wood clarified that he was not seeking to rely on these documents at this error-of-law hearing, but would seek to rely on them at any potential remaking hearing. As such, we determined not to admit the extra evidence at this stage.

9. Following the submissions, we announced that we would reserve our decision, which we are delivering now.

Grounds of appeal

10. Ground 1 is that the Judge failed to apply the guidance in ‘Joint Presidential Guidance Note No 2 of 2010: Child, vulnerable adult and sensitive witnesses’ in his assessment of the Appellant’s evidence and that this constitutes a procedural unfairness such as to constitute an error of law.

11. Ground 2 is that the Judge caused procedural unfairness amounting to an error of law by placing into issue matters that were not in dispute between the parties – namely that the Appellant’s ex-husband wanted to subject his daughters to FGM outside of Botswana, and the lack of corroborative evidence for the claimed business and position of the ex-husband.

12. Ground 3a is that the Judge failed to make findings of fact on a security guard incident report when he was under a duty to so, that failure amounting to an error of law.

13. Ground 3b is that the Judge failed in relation to his assessment of a note from a UK school to consider the documents in the round. Specifically that he failed to consider a Botswana Police Service Affidavit which is said to be relevant, and that failure amounting to an error of law.

Submissions

14. The submissions are recorded in full in the audio recording of the hearing and so are not repeated in full here.

15. In brief, Mr Wood asked us to rely on his written grounds and said that if an error of law is found in relation to Ground 1 the matter should be remitted to the First-tier Tribunal, but if an error of law is found on another ground he did not have a preference as to whether it should be retained in the Upper Tribunal or remitted to the First-tier Tribunal.

16. Dr Ibisi maintained the Respondent’s opposition to the appeal and said that the judge did take into account the Appellant’s vulnerability, that the vulnerability does not affect the reasons for the Judge’s findings, and that the Judge was not under a duty to explicitly write about the documents raised in Grounds 3a and Grounds 3b. She agreed with Mr Wood as to disposal of the case if an error of law is found.

Findings of fact – Error of law

Ground 1

17. Both parties are correct that the Judge was under a duty in this case to apply the Joint Presidential Guidance Note No 2 as per AM (Afghanistan) v SSHD [2017] EWCA Civ 1123.

18. The most relevant paragraph of this Guidance Note in the context of this appeal is at [15]:

“The decision should record whether the Tribunal has concluded the appellant (or a witness) is a child, vulnerable or sensitive, the effect the Tribunal considered the identified vulnerability had in assessing the evidence before it and thus whether the Tribunal was satisfied whether the appellant had established his or her case to the relevant standard of proof. In asylum appeals, weight should be given to objective indications of risk rather than necessarily to a state of mind”

19. The Judge has recorded that the Appellant was vulnerable in his judgment at [6]:

“Mr Wood invited me to treat the Appellant as vulnerable. I asked what adjustments he invited the Court to make and he submitted questions should be appropriately phrased and breaks should be offered. Both of these adjustments were implemented.”

20. The Judge’s first paragraph under his heading ‘FINDINGS’ is as follows at [27]:

“I have assessed the Appellant’s evidence against an acceptance that she is vulnerable and reports a history of domestic violence and sexual violence but I do not accept the Appellant is a credible witness and I am satisfied she has sought to invent a story to create a risk.”

21. We find that the Appellant’s vulnerability was at the forefront of the Judge’s mind during the hearing and when he was making his decision. This is because it was explicitly raised and expanded on in the Appellant’s Skeleton Argument before the First-tier Tribunal, because a discussion around the Appellant’s vulnerability was had at the outset of that hearing, and that the Judge explicitly addresses the issue at [6] in relation to the conduct of the hearing, and in his first findings paragraph at [27].

22. The crux of Ground 1 is that it is claimed that the Judge failed to adequately take into account the Appellant’s vulnerabilities when assessing her evidence in making the finding that she is not a credible witness.

23. For this Ground to succeed, there must be identified what vulnerabilities the Appellant had; what the reasons were that the Judge found her not to be credible; what the link is between these vulnerabilities and these reasons; and how the judge failed to adequately take into account the vulnerabilities in his decision and reasons.

24. We note that in SB (vulnerable adult: credibility) Ghana [2019] UKUT 00398 (IAC) it states at [60] that

“… The fact that a judicial fact-finder decides to treat an appellant or witness as a vulnerable adult does not mean that any adverse credibility finding in respect of that person is thereby to be regarded as inherently problematic and thus open to challenge on appeal.”

From this it is clear that it was at least potentially open to the Judge to make adverse credibility findings even though the Appellant is vulnerable.

25. Later in that Judgment, President Lane holds that in that case the link between the appellant’s vulnerability and the adverse credibility findings had not been made out and that the First-tier Tribunal were entitled to make adverse credibility findings on the basis of what the appellant said and did during the course of their claim at [63-64]

“…At paragraph 40, the judge expressly stated that she had had regard to the appellant as vulnerable, given his diagnosis of depression “and that he should be accorded liberal application of the benefit of the doubt”. Mr Allison was completely unable before us to show that Judge Plumptre might not, in fact, have done what she expressly said she did. On the contrary, Mr Allison could offer no explanation of how the fact that the appellant has been on antidepressants is capable of having a positive bearing on the credibility of his account, by reference to his contradictory statements ranging over a considerable period of time. As the Vice President observed at the hearing, there is nothing to show that the appellant’s answers at interview were any more or less to be taken at face value on this account than were his subsequent written submissions, including his witness statement of May 2019.

In any event, certain fundamental problems with the appellant’s account cannot rationally be ascribed to his depression. His inconsistencies regarding whether he has family in Ghana were attempted to be explained on the basis that he meant “my relatives not a direct family and even my friends as well” (paragraph 53). The appellant was not here asserting that he had forgotten about or been too depressed to remember whether he had family in Ghana. Likewise, the judge’s findings at paragraphs 60 to 62 were that it was unbelievable that an individual who had not known the appellant for long would give him drugs, or that the appellant would enter into such an arrangement. The same is also true of the judge’s finding that it was not believable the appellant would put his best friend’s life at risk.”

26. In the case before us, the Appellant’s Skeleton Argument states that “the Appellant should be treated as vulnerable due to her mental ill-health”. In support of this, the Appellant submitted a photograph of a partial print-out from her GP surgery listing “Anxiety disorder” at 23 November 2023 along with a record of medications consisting of 100mg sertraline (a first-line SSRI medication prescribed in dosages between 50-200mg) and 40mg propranolol (a first-line medication used as required to treat acute symptoms of anxiety or panic).

27. Although not explicitly linked to vulnerability in the Appellant’s Skeleton Argument, Mr Wood argued that the Appellant is also vulnerable due to the domestic abuse perpetrated on her by her ex-husband.

28. We have analysed the Judge’s reasons for why he found her not to be a credible witness. In brief the Judge is relying on the following:

a. differences in the account the Appellant gave as to her ex-husband’s role as chairman of a national Islamic group;
b. the lack of evidential support for the Appellant’s claim relating to her ex-husband’s business interests where the judge finds she could reasonably have been expected to provide this;
c. the Appellant’s actions in travelling abroad for work without her children which the Judge found undermines the Appellant’s claim of fear that her ex-husband would subject her daughters to FGM;
d. the lack of mention of FGM when she was giving her initial interview to claim asylum from which the judge draws an adverse inference and highlights the level of detail and eloquent explanation provided by the Appellant in the rest of the interview;
e. the lack of evidential support that her ex-husband is behind two burglaries at her home;
f. the lack of evidential support that her dog was poisoned and that her ex-husband was behind it; and
g. the lack of evidential support that her mother was poisoned.

29. We find when considering Ground 1 that the Appellant has not satisfactorily linked the Appellant’s vulnerabilities with the reasons the Judge provides for his findings. The Judge at [6] addresses the adjustments he made during the hearing and it is not being suggested that he has not applied these to the taking of the Appellant’s evidence. Nor has it been suggested that the Respondent has failed to adequately take the vulnerabilities of the Appellant into account during her contact with them (albeit the interpretation by the Respondent of this contact, such as the screening interview, is being challenged).

30. The Judge clearly at [27] had the Appellant’s vulnerability in mind when assessing the evidence and we are not persuaded that he has not done so adequately. It was open for the Judge to find that the Appellant’s anxiety condition and her history of experiencing domestic violence do not satisfactorily explain: the lack of provision of various evidential support to the Appellant’s claims; the inconsistencies over a period of time in her account regarding her ex-husband’s religious and business positions; her actions in travelling abroad for work; and her failure to mention the risk of FGM to her children at an early stage in her claim.

31. We are satisfied that the Appellant has not established a link between her vulnerabilities and the lack of provision of evidence which could have been gathered over a period of time, allowing for any acute anxiety attacks to subside. Further it is not clear whether the Appellant was claiming to be suffering from an anxiety disorder when she chose to travel abroad for work, but it is obvious that this decision was also not materially affected by any anxiety. Additionally, although it was not specifically argued, any reluctance to raise FGM at the initial screening interview we find could have been remedied in a timely manner when any acute anxiety had subsided, for example by timely submission to the Respondent.

32. In summary we find that Ground 1 is not made out.

Ground 2

33. We find that this Ground is not made out because it was clear in the Respondent’s refusal letter that they did not accept the Appellant’s evidence on all material matters. In this letter under the heading “Material facts I accept”, it states “None”. Further under the heading “Credibility” the letter states “You provided inconsistent evidence without reasonable explanation, as well as a lack of detail. There are some elements of your account that were implausible and inconsistent with external information”.

34. We find that it is clear that the Respondent did not accept the basis of the Appellant’s claim at all and the Judge was entitled to make findings as he did in relation to whether the Appellant’s husband was seeking to submit his daughters to FGM outside of Botswana, and the lack of supporting evidence for the ex-husbands claimed business and position.

35. We find that Ground 2 is not made out.

Ground 3a

36. We refer to ourselves to MA (Somalia) v SSHD [2010] UKSC 49 where it states at [45]:

“But the court should not be astute to characterise as an error of law what, in truth, is no more than a disagreement with the AIT’s assessment of the facts. Moreover, 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.”

37. We are also mindful of R (Jones) v First-tier Tribunal (Social Entitlement Chamber) [2013] UKSC 19 at [25] where it states:

“… It is well established, as an aspect of tribunal law and practice, that judicial restraint should be exercised when the reasons that a tribunal gives for its decision are being examined. The appellate court should not assume too readily that the tribunal misdirected itself just because not every step in its reasoning is fully set out in it….”

38. The Judge deals with the issue of the dog’s infirmity in [34] as follows:

“The Appellant relies on the fact that her dog was poisoned as support for the proposition of her ex-husband’s nefarious activities and she served a vet’s report. She was asked in cross-exmination (sic) how the vet’s letter established the dog was poisoned and she said it took a bit of research to show it was poisoned but, again, this was evidence of an assertion with no foundation in fact and part of a broader attempt to create a story requiring protection.”

39. In our view it is important to understand the context of [34]. This is one paragraph that deals with one reason that goes to the Judge’s broader finding as to the lack of support for the Appellant’s claim. That broader finding is further supported by a range of other examples provided by the Judge.

40. In [34] we find the Judge was entitled to rely on the evidence of the vet’s report, a report by a relevantly qualified individual who had examined the dog and produced a report that patently does not mention poisoning, in conjunction with the Appellant’s oral evidence and assertion in [14] of her witness statement that “The dog was poisoned; I refer to the vet invoice at AB 17.”. In her witness statement it is only the vet invoice that is directly linked to the alleged dog poisoning.

41. In summary we find that Ground 3a does not amount to an error of law.

Ground 3b

42. This Ground alleges that the Judge failed to consider the documents in the round as required by the principles established in Tanveer Ahmed (Documents unreliable and forged) Pakistan [2002] UKIAT 00439 in relation to the consideration of the Botswana Police Service Affidavit, which includes the sentence “I would like to withdraw…from school activities and attendance for security reasons”, in his consideration of the later excerpt from a document from one of the children’s UK school.

43. The Judge deals with the evidence from the UK school at [36] as follows:

“Although the Appellant relies on a note from one of her children’s schools, the note is not dated, the recipient of the information did not give evidence, the record is brief and there is no context to it and in such circumstances I attach little weight to it.”

44. We find that the Judge was entitled to treat the evidence from the school as he did. The evidence amounts to a photograph of one part of one page on what is patently a multi-page report. The text that is visible is only 38 words long. The Judge has focussed on the inadequacy in his view of this photograph in supporting the contention put forward by the Appellant and we find that he was entitled to do so.

45. In Tanveer Ahmed it is clear at [38] that “In asylum and human rights cases it is for an individual claimant to show that a document on which he seeks to rely can be relied on” and in our judgment the Judge has applied this principle, as well as the other relevant principles, in his assessment of the school evidence. We find that the Judge did not need to refer to the Botswana Police Service Affidavit in his consideration as it does not affect the central reasons for him putting little weight on the note from the school. These reasons focus on the poor evidential qualities surrounding the note and the way it has been presented to the Tribunal, these are not materially affected in our view by the contents of the Botswana Police Service Affidavit.

46. As such we find that Ground 3b does not amount to an error of law.

Conclusion

47. We have carefully considered the bundle, submissions of both parties, and the Grounds of appeal and we find that there is no material error of law in this case. The appeal is dismissed and the decision of the First-tier Tribunal signed on 16 July 2025 stands.

Notice of Decision

The appellant’s appeal is dismissed. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve a material error of law and stands.

Judge Richards

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

12 February 2026