UI-2025-005371

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The decision



IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2025-005371
First-tier Tribunal No: HU/00523/2022

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 17th of April 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE O’BRIEN

Between

AA
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms A Radford of Counsel
For the Respondent: Ms S Rushforth, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Cardiff Civil Justice Centre on 9 April 2026

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 appeals against the decision of the First-tier Tribunal dated 31 March 2025 dismissing his appeal against the respondent's decision dated 22 March 2024 to refuse his protection and human rights claim.
2. Permission to appeal was refused by the First-tier Tribunal but granted on renewal by Upper Tribunal Judge McWilliam. The renewed grounds allege in short that the decision involved a material finding of fact based on evidence not relied upon by the respondent or alternatively a finding without evidential basis, a failure to consider background evidence, a failure to give adequate reasons for rejecting the appellant’s claim of statelessness, and a failure to determine the appellant’s Article 8 claim.
3. Ms Rushforth conceded at the hearing that the judge’s decision involved the making of an error in a matter of law, such that the appeal should be remitted to the First-tier Tribunal to be heard afresh. I consider that the respondent’s concession of this appeal was well-made. The judge accepted that the appellant had given an inconsistent account to social services based on an unevidenced assertion to that effect in the refusal letter. He had also failed to deal in any reasonable detail with the question if whether the appellant was stateless and/or whether he would be at risk my mere fact of his Roma ethnicity.
4. Both parties agreed, however, that there had been no challenge to the First-tier Tribunal’s findings regarding s72 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, and that they should therefore be preserved. Those findings are to be found at [44] to [58] of the decision. Nevertheless, they agreed that all other findings should be set aside, and consequently that it was necessary to remit the appeal to the First-tier Tribunal. I agree.
Notice of Decision
1. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal involved the making of an error on a point of law and is set aside.
2. The appeal is remitted to the First-tier Tribunal to be heard afresh by another judge with no findings preserved, save for those at [44] to [58] of the decision.


Sean O’Brien

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber


10 April 2026