Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2025-005362
First-tier Tribunal No: HU/57120/2023
LH/05178/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 16th March 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE O’BRIEN

Between

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Appellant
and

RSS
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mrs R Abdul-Karim, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer
For the Respondent: Mr D Bazini of Counsel, instructed by Twinwood Law Practice

Heard at Birmingham Civil Justice Centre on 16 February 2026

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellant 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. For the sake of convenience, I refer below to the parties as they were known before the First-tier Tribunal.
Background
2. The respondent appeals against the decision of a Judge of the First-tier Tribunal (‘the judge’) allowing the appellant’s appeal against the respondent’s decision dated 24 May 2023 to refuse his human rights claim.
3. The appellant had applied for leave to remain on the basis of his relationship with his child with an individual from whom he was separated and in acrimonious Family Court proceedings. He did not presently have direct contact with his British citizen child; however, he maintained that he still had a genuine and subsisting relationship with the child and that his removal would be a disproportionate interference in their family life.
4. The respondent found that the appellant did not meet the rules applicable for leave to remain as a parent and that there were no other exceptional circumstances, and so refused to grant the appellant leave to remain. On appeal, the judge found that the appellant did not have direct contact with his child, but that his relationship was nevertheless genuine and subsisting. The appellant consequentially faced very significant obstacles to reintegration, such that he satisfied the private life rules and that there were in any event very compelling circumstances such that refusal would give rise to unjustifiably harsh consequences. She concluded that the appellant’s removal would breach Article 8 ECHR.
5. The respondent was given permission to appeal by the First-tier Tribunal on all pleaded grounds. Those grounds can be summarised thus. The judge made findings unsupported by the evidence (para 9 of the grounds). The judge misapplied the test for integration applicable under the private life rules (para 11). The judge failed to identify any very significant obstacles to reintegration (para 13). The aforesaid errors infected the judge’s assessment under GEN.3.2 (para 14). Consequently, the judge failed to give adequate reasons for her conclusions.
The Hearing
6. The representatives each made oral submissions, in the respondent’s case on the basis of her grounds of appeal and, in the appellant's case, on the basis of his rule 24 response.
7. Regrettably, the respondent had not provided a consolidated bundle in accordance with standard directions, and gave no good reason for that failure. However, the appellant confirmed that he was not prejudiced. The parties and I each had all of the documents before the judge, the grounds of appeal and decision granting permission, and the appellant’s rule 24 response.
8. Whilst I refer below only to such matters as is necessary to understand my decision, I took all of the evidence to which I was directed and the submissions into account in their entirety.
Consideration
Ground One
9. The judge’s findings said not to be supported by the evidence are to be found at [18] and [22] (my emphasis):
‘18. However, since that time, the situation has changed, and the family proceedings are set out in a useful chronology prepared by Counsel in this case. The Appellant has, since 2023 issued court proceedings via the fmaily [sic] court and permission has been given for these documents to be before the Immigration court. The WS of the Appellant clearly sets out the contact he has had with his children, the large part that he played in their lives until he entered into an acrimonious divorce and the determined efforts, he is making via the family courts to see his children. The CAFCASS report stated that he could have contact with his children subject to some courses that he has to complete, which he is undertaking.
22. More significantly the Appellant is undertaking a course (Appellant’s supplementary bundle consisting of 6 pages) that confirms he is doing the course as directed by the family court judge. This is a course that is only run in the UK and not available to him in Pakistan and he cannot do the course remotely. I find that if he were to return this would stop him from taking part which is the only way he can gain a contact order with his children.’
10. The respondent’s criticism is that the evidence showed only that the appellant intended to undertake the course in question, had been assessed for suitability for the course only the day before the hearing and so was not as a matter of fact undertaking the course at the date of the hearing. The appellant’s submission is that the respondent’s challenge represents an overly narrow reading of the relevant findings, which must be read in context.
11. The relevant passages of the appellant’s second witness statement dated 24 July 2025, to which the judge had express regard (at [8] she refers to the appellant’s ‘witness statements’), states:
‘15. The current family Court proceedings are such that I have been requested to undertake an accredited DAPP course in order to gain a better understanding about the concerns raised by the respondent (ex wife).
16. Once I complete the course I will have to make a further application seeking contact with my children.’
12. Also before the judge was a chronology, in which it was recorded that a suitability assessment for the DAPP course was planned for 6 October 2025 and that the appellant had filed an application on 26 August 2025 enrolling for the course. She refers expressly to that chronology in [18].
13. It simply cannot be the case that the judge understood the appellant to have already started the course. Instead, the judge’s use of the present tense in the challenged findings are capable of signifying, and I find were intended to signify, his having started the process of undertaking the course in question. In any event, it is clear that the judge’s focus was on removal preventing the appellant’s completion of that course, whether or not he had already started the course.
14. Consequently, I find that ground one does not disclose an error, or alternatively a material error, of law. The judge had not misapprehended the applicant’s status on the DAPP course. She would in any event have reached the same conclusion as to the effect of removal on the appellant’s ability to complete the course, whether he had started it or not.
Grounds Two and Three
15. The respondent submits that the judge, in finding that the appellant faced very significant obstacles to reintegrating into India, misapplied SSHD v Kamara [2016] EWCA Civ 813 and Parveen v SSHD [2018] EWCA Civ 932. She submits that the judge has failed to identify any barriers to integration, focussing instead on ‘unrelated factors’ related to his claimed family life in the United Kingdom.
16. It is worth recall what these authorities have to say on the point in question. In Kamara at [14], Sales LJ said:
‘In my view, the concept of a foreign criminal's "integration" into the country to which it is proposed that he be deported, as set out in section 117C(4)(c) and paragraph 399A, is a broad one. It is not confined to the mere ability to find a job or to sustain life while living in the other country. It is not appropriate to treat the statutory language as subject to some gloss and it will usually be sufficient for a court or tribunal simply to direct itself in the terms that Parliament has chosen to use. The idea of "integration" calls for a broad evaluative judgment to be made as to whether the individual will be enough of an insider in terms of understanding how life in the society in that other country is carried on and a capacity to participate in it, so as to have a reasonable opportunity to be accepted there, to be able to operate on a day-to-day basis in that society and to build up within a reasonable time a variety of human relationships to give substance to the individual's private or family life.’
17. In Parveen at [9], Underhill said:
‘That passage [above at [14] in Kamara] focuses more on the concept of integration than on what is meant by "very significant obstacles". The latter point was recently addressed by the Upper Tribunal (McCloskey J and UTJ Francis) in Treebhawon v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] UKUT 13 (IAC). At para. 37 of its judgment the UT said:
"The other limb of the test, 'very significant obstacles', erects a self-evidently elevated threshold, such that mere hardship, mere difficulty, mere hurdles and mere upheaval or inconvenience, even where multiplied, will generally be insufficient in this context."
I have to say that I do not find that a very useful gloss on the words of the rule. It is fair enough to observe that the words "very significant" connote an "elevated" threshold, and I have no difficulty with the observation that the test will not be met by "mere inconvenience or upheaval". But I am not sure that saying that "mere" hardship or difficulty or hurdles, even if multiplied, will not "generally" suffice adds anything of substance. The task of the Secretary of State, or the Tribunal, in any given case is simply to assess the obstacles to integration relied on, whether characterised as hardship or difficulty or anything else, and to decide whether they regard them as "very significant".‘
18. The respondent does not explain how the judge misapplied the above authorities save for taking into account matters connected to the appellant’s claimed family life in the United Kingdom. I do not consider that Kamara prohibits such matters being taken into account, provided that they can rationally bear on the matters identified in the final sentence of [14], and in particular an individual’s understanding of how life in the society of the destination country is carried on and/or their capacity to participate in that society, and their ability to consequentially to develop a substantial family or private life within a reasonable period.
19. To that end, and having found at [22] that returning the appellant to ‘Pakistan’ (an unfortunate but ultimately inconsequential typographical error) would stop him from taking part in the DAPP course which in turn was the only way he could gain a contact order with his children, the judge directed herself at [24] to the above passage of Kamara before finding at [25]:
‘25. I find that stopping him from accessing his children, by making him leave the UK means that he cannot ever build up a variety of human relationships to give substance to the individuals family life, as the court intended.’
and at [27]:
‘27. I find that being stopped from fighting a court case to see his children is not mere hardship, mere difficulty or mere hurdles or upheavals but is a very significant obstacles and is unduly harsh.’
20. These findings are neither a misapplication of Kamara and Parveen nor do they represent an irrational or unreasonable application of the test of very significant obstacles to reintegration. In short, I find that the judge did not err as alleged in grounds two and three.
Ground Four
21. Ground 4 as pleaded alleges that the errors in grounds one to three infected the judge’s assessment under GEN.3.2. It follows that, having found none of those grounds to disclose errors of law, ground four must also fail. However, in her oral submissions, Mrs Abdul-Karim submitted that it had not been rationally open to the judge to find that Article 8 was engaged given her acceptance that the appellant did not at the time of the hearing have any contact with his children. Mr Bazini submitted that this was not a ground of appeal raised by the respondent for which permission had been given, nor was it Robinson obvious. He submitted that it was a hopeless point in any event, as it had been unarguably open to the judge, having taken into account the uncontentious circumstances of the case to find that family life continued to exist [63] and/or that the appellant’s removal was contrary to the children’s best interests [69].
22. I agree with Mr Bazini. The focus of the respondent’s grounds of appeal is the question of the appellant’s reintegration into India. There is no clearly identifiable express challenge to the judge’s findings on the engagement of Article 8. Even if I were to take a generous approach to the respondent’s grounds of appeal, I do not find there to have been any error of law in the judge’s finding that family life existed between the appellant and his children.
23. The mere fact that, at the date of the hearing, there had not been contact for some time between the appellant and his children did not necessitate a finding that fami;y life no longer existed. It was rationally open to the judge to find, in circumstances where there had been significant contact from birth until July 2024 [68], which it had ceased because of allegations made by their mother which had not been proceeded with by the police [ibid] and where the appellant was taking positive steps to re-establish contact, that family life subsisted.
24. In any event, there does not appear to have been any challenge, even at the hearing, to the judge’s finding that it would be ‘totally contrary to’ the children’s best interests for the appellant to be removed pending resolution of his application for renewed contact. In the circumstances, it was rationally and reasonably open to the judge to find that GEN.3.2 applied.
Notice of Decision
1. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve the making of an error of law and so stands undisturbed.

Sean O’Brien

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber
13 March 2026