Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-000178
First-tier Tribunal No: HU/00851/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 11th of June 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE LODATO

Between

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Appellant
and

EG
(ANONYMITY ORDERED)
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms Newton, Senior Presenting Officer
For the Respondent: Ms Mottershaw, counsel

Heard at Manchester Civil Justice Centre on 19 May 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
Introduction and Background
1. I have decided to maintain the anonymity order originally made in these proceedings by the First-tier Tribunal (‘FtT’) because the underlying claim involves international protection issues in that the appellant claims to fear persecution or serious harm on return to Turkey. In reaching this decision, I am mindful of the fundamental principle of open justice, but I am satisfied, taking the appellant’s case at its highest for these purposes, that the potential grave risks outweigh the rights of the public to know of his identity.
2. The Secretary of State for the Home Department appeals with permission against the decision, dated 22 October 2025, of a judge of the First-tier Tribunal (‘the judge’) to allow the appeal on human rights grounds. The protection grounds of appeal were dismissed.
3. To avoid confusion, and for the remainder of this decision, I will refer to the Secretary of State for the Home Department as the respondent and EG as the appellant, as they were before the FtT.
4. The appellant is a Turkish national subject to deportation proceedings following his conviction for offences including burglary of a dwelling. He was sentenced to a total period of imprisonment of 15 months. His appeal before the FtT was founded on protection and human rights grounds in which he asserted that his removal would expose him to a real risk of serious harm contrary to Article 3 of the ECHR on three discrete bases: retribution from a violent uncle who had inflicted significant abuse during his childhood; danger arising from an inter‑family blood feud; and a risk of suicide said to be exacerbated by his longstanding and complex mental health difficulties. He also relied upon Article 8 of the ECHR. He argued that his lengthy residence in the United Kingdom and Isle of Man, his degree of social and cultural integration, the very significant obstacles he would face in reintegrating into Turkish society, his relationship with his former partner, and his parental relationships with his minor children would render his deportation a disproportionate interference with private and family life.
The FtT Decision
5. The judge’s decision is exceptionally detailed and runs to some 187 paragraphs across 36 pages. It would overburden this decision to exhaustively seek to summarise such a lengthy judicial determination. Below I have summarised the judge’s key findings and conclusions.
6. The judge rejected each limb of the appellant’s Article 3 claim. While it was accepted that the appellant had suffered significant childhood trauma, including physical abuse by his uncle and witnessing the killing of his grandmother, the judge was not satisfied that any present-day risk arose on return to Turkey, noting the absence of contact for decades, the appellant’s own uncertainty as to whether the uncle remained alive, and the incongruity between the asserted fear and the appellant’s past voluntary returns to Turkey on family holidays. The claim based on a blood feud was found to be vague, unsubstantiated, and lacking in evidential support. As to the risk of suicide, although the appellant was accepted to suffer from complex mental health conditions, the judge concluded that the evidential threshold under Article 3 was not met, finding the risk of suicide insufficiently established and, in any event, noting the availability of mental health treatment in Turkey.
7. Turning to Article 8, the judge found that the appellant was a “foreign criminal” and that neither statutory exception in section 117C(4) or (5) of the 2002 Act was satisfied. He had not been lawfully resident in the United Kingdom for most of his life, albeit he was found to be socially and culturally integrated here. A lengthy period of residence in the Isle of Man was discounted for the purposes of calculating the time he had lawfully resided in the UK because a statutory amendment to the 2002 Act, which later included this territory within the UK, tended to suggest it was not so encompassed when the Act initially went into force. Whilst the judge accepted that there would be very significant obstacles to the appellant’s reintegration in Turkey, his case on the private life exception failed because he was not found to have been lawfully resident in the UK for most of his life. The judge further accepted that the appellant enjoyed a genuine and subsisting parental relationship with his children, but concluded that the impact of deportation, although profound, would not cross the elevated threshold of being unduly harsh given the children’s established care arrangements and continued residence with their mother.
8. Having found that neither the private life nor the family life statutory exceptions applied, the judge considered whether very compelling circumstances existed to outweigh the public interest in his deportation. The judge came to the following conclusion at [186]:
[186] Nevertheless, when I look at everything in the round – when I bear in mind the fact that (i) the Appellant’s sentence for the index offences places him at the lower end of the spectrum of medium offenders; (ii) it is plain from that sentence (and the sentence imposed on him on 4 March 2008), that the Sentencing Judges considered the offences to fall at the lower end of the category of seriousness; (iii) the Appellant entered the United Kingdom as an 11 year old child in 1990; (iv) he lived continuously in this country throughout all or a large part of the period between 1990 and the late 1990’s and the early 2000s; (v) he lived in the Isle of Man for at least a significant proportion of the period between the early 2000s until 2017; (vi) he has lived continuously in the UK since 2017; (vii) the Appellant had some form of leave to remain since before 2008; (viii) he is socially and culturally integrated here (albeit not to the same extent that of a person who had entered the country as a child 35 years ago, lived continuously on the mainland, and led a blameless life); (ix) he has no familial ties in Turkey; (x) he would face very significant obstacles to reintegration in Turkey; (xi) his deportation would have a profound emotional impact on his children, aged 9 to 14, and may well impact negatively on their ongoing development as well Ms Hurley’s ability to care for them – I find that there are circumstances in the Appellant’s case that are sufficiently compelling as to outweigh the very strong public interest in deportation. It follows that there are very compelling circumstances, over and above the circumstances described in Exceptions 1 and 2, for the purposes of section 117C(6).
Appeal to the Upper Tribunal
9. The Secretary of State applied for permission to appeal in reliance on a single ground:
i. Failing to give adequate reasons for findings on a material matter, namely, the existence of very compelling circumstances over and above the statutory exceptions.
10. In a decision dated 17 March 2026, Upper Tribunal Judge Perkins granted permission for the appeal to be argued.
11. At the error of law hearing, I heard oral submissions from both parties. I address any submissions of significance in the discussion section below.
Discussion
12. After citing the provisions of s.117C(6) of the 2002 Act, the judge directed himself as to the meaning of very compelling circumstances at [169]:
[169] The application of “very compelling circumstances” test requires a full proportionality assessment, weighing the interference with the article 8 rights of the potential deportee and his family against the public interest in his deportation. However, the Tribunal does not have carte blanche. On the contrary, it is required to proceed on the basis that “the public interest requires deportation unless there are very compelling circumstances over and above those described in Exceptions 1 and 2” (see, HA (Iraq), per Underhill LJ, at paragraph 29).
13. Curiously, the judge referred to the Court of Appeal judgment in HA (Iraq) [2021] 1 W.L.R. 1327, a decision which was later appealed to the Supreme Court. In their judgment, the Supreme Court cited paragraph 29 of the judgment of Underhill LJ before going on to explain the meaning of “over and above” for these purposes by drawing on the dicta of Jackson LJ in NA (Pakistan) [2017] 1 W.L.R. 207 (passages which were also cited by Underhill LJ at [33] of his judgment in HA (Iraq)). The Supreme Court interpreted this provision in the following terms:
The very compelling circumstances test
[46] Under section 117C(6) of the 2002 Act deportation may be avoided if it can be proved that there are "very compelling circumstances, over and above those described in Exceptions 1 and 2'.
[47] The difference in approach called for under section 117C(6) as opposed to 117C(5) was conveniently summarised by Underhill LJ at para 29 of his judgment as follows:
"(A) In the cases covered by the two Exceptions in subsections (4)-(5), which apply only to medium offenders, the public interest question is answered in favour of the foreign criminal, without the need for a full proportionality assessment. Parliament has pre-determined that in the circumstances there specified the public interest in the deportation of medium offenders does not outweigh the article 8 interests of the foreign criminal or his family: they are, given, so to speak, a short cut. The consideration of whether those Exceptions apply is a self-contained exercise governed by their particular terms.
"(B) In cases where the two Exceptions do not apply—that is, in the case of a serious offender or in the case of a medium offender who cannot satisfy their requirements—a full proportionality assessment is required, weighing the interference with the article 8 rights of the potential deportee and his family against the public interest in his deportation. In conducting that assessment the decision-maker is required by section 117C(6) (and paragraph 398 of the Rules) to proceed on the basis that 'the public interest requires deportation unless there are very compelling circumstances over and above those described in Exceptions 1 and 2'.'
[48] In Rhuppiah v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] 1 WLR 4203, para 50 Sales LJ emphasised that the public interest 'requires' deportation unless very compelling circumstances are established and stated that the test 'provides a safety valve, with an appropriately high threshold of application, for those exceptional cases involving foreign criminals in which the private and family life considerations are so strong that it would be disproportionate and in violation of article 8 to remove them'.
[49] As explained by Lord Reed JSC in his judgment in Hesham Ali v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] 1 WLR 4799, para 38 :
'great weight should generally be given to the public interest in the deportation of [qualifying] offenders, but …it can be outweighed, applying a proportionality test, by very compelling circumstances: in other words, by a very strong claim indeed, as Laws LJ put it in the SS (Nigeria) case [2014] 1 WLR 998 . The countervailing considerations must be very compelling in order to outweigh the general public interest in the deportation of such offenders, as assessed by Parliament and the Secretary of State."
[50] How Exceptions 1 and 2 relate to the very compelling circumstances test was addressed by Jackson LJ in NA (Pakistan) [2017] 1 WLR 207 . In relation to serious offenders he stated as follows:
"30. In the case of a serious offender who could point to circumstances in his own case which could be said to correspond to the circumstances described in Exceptions 1 and 2, but where he could only just succeed in such an argument, it would not be possible to describe his situation as involving very compelling circumstances, over and above those described in Exceptions 1 and 2. One might describe that as a bare case of the kind described in Exceptions 1 or 2. On the other hand, if he could point to factors identified in the descriptions of Exceptions 1 and 2 of an especially compelling kind in support of an article 8 claim, going well beyond what would be necessary to make out a bare case of the kind described in Exceptions 1 and 2, they could in principle constitute 'very compelling circumstances, over and above those described in Exceptions 1 and 2', whether taken by themselves or in conjunction with other factors relevant to application of article 8 .'
In relation to medium offenders he stated:
'32. Similarly, in the case of a medium offender, if all he could advance in support of his article 8 claim was a 'near miss' case in which he fell short of bringing himself within either Exception 1 or Exception 2, it would not be possible to say that he had shown that there were 'very compelling circumstances, over and above those described in Exceptions 1 and 2'. He would need to have a far stronger case than that by reference to the interests protected by article 8 to bring himself within that fall back protection. But again, in principle there may be cases in which such an offender can say that features of his case of a kind described in Exceptions 1 and 2 have such great force for article 8 purposes that they do constitute such very compelling circumstances, whether taken by themselves or in conjunction with other factors relevant to article 8 but not falling within the factors described in Exceptions 1 and 2. The decision-maker, be it the Secretary of State or a tribunal, must look at all the matters relied upon collectively, in order to determine whether they are sufficiently compelling to outweigh the high public interest in deportation.'
He also emphasised the high threshold which must be satisfied:
'33. Although there is no 'exceptionality' requirement, it inexorably follows from the statutory scheme that the cases in which circumstances are sufficiently compelling to outweigh the high public interest in deportation will be rare. The commonplace incidents of family life, such as ageing parents in poor health or the natural love between parents and children, will not be sufficient.'
[Underlining added]
14. Having found that the appellant could neither satisfy the private life nor the family life exceptions, the judge returned, at [186], to those very same factors which fell short to conclude that very compelling circumstances nonetheless existed. The only matters which were not previously canvassed under the exceptions-focussed analysis earlier in the decision were the judge’s initial observations about the seriousness of the criminal offences which underpinned the deportation process. While this was obviously relevant in measuring the strength of the public interest in his removal, it had no bearing on whether his Article 8 case was of sufficient strength to reach the very high threshold of very compelling circumstances. In a case where the judge expressly found that the appellant fell short of each statutory exception, and where he pointed to no other features outside of those private life and family life paradigms, it was necessary for the judge to explain why it was that the appellant had, in the words of Jackson LJ, a far stronger case than under the exceptions. I agree with the submissions made by Ms Mottershaw that the law permits a finding that very compelling circumstances where the exceptions are not met, but in such a case the judge must adequately explain why that conclusion has been reached. It is not sufficient to find that the exceptions are not met and then reiterate the very same points which fell short, even if on a ‘near-miss’ basis, and assert that very compelling circumstances exist to outweigh the public interest in the deportation of foreign criminals.
15. The respondent has a legitimate complaint that the judge’s reasons leave her in the dark about why near-misses on the private life and family life exceptions was found to be a “very strong claim indeed” to meet the elevated threshold. I find myself unable to make sense of a conclusion which appears to do no more than rehearse the previous analysis under the exceptions and pronounce that there are very compelling circumstances. I find that the reasoning in not adequate in law.
Disposal
16. The parties were agreed that it was appropriate for the underlying decision to be remade in the Upper Tribunal if the decision involved a material error of law, as I have. It is only the absence of sufficient reasoning at paragraph [186] which involved an error. There was no challenge from either side to the judge’s conclusions or reasons on the remaining factual matters he determined in the context of the Article 3 claim and under the private life and family life exceptions. I see no reason to go behind or unpick that comprehensive evaluation of the facts. I gave serious consideration to immediately remaking the appeal by deciding the question of very compelling circumstances on the facts as found by the judge. The only matter which persuades me to list the appeal for a remaking hearing is whether the appellant’s residence on the Isle of Man qualified for the purposes of lawful residence for the purposes of the private life exception. If this residence does count, then he would satisfy the statutory private life exception given the remaining findings of the judge. Neither side were in a position to address me on this hard-edged point of statutory construction and whether the amendment of the 2002 Act to embrace the Isle of Man as being part of the UK for the purposes of the statutory scheme had the effect of rendering the appellant’s residence in that territory qualifying for the purposes of the private life exception. Both parties will need to address this question and whether very compelling circumstances exist for the purposes of the remaking hearing to be listed in due course.

Notice of Decision
The judge’s decision involved a material error of law. I allow the Secretary of State’s appeal against the decision and I set it aside. Apart from paragraph [186], the judge’s fact-finding assessment is preserved. The judge’s legal analysis going to whether residence in the Isle of Man qualifies as legal residence in the UK for the purposes of the 2002 Act is not preserved and will be decided on remaking the underlying appeal.
I make the following directions:
i. The matter will be listed on the first available date for a remaking hearing. The matter is to be listed face-to-face for 3 hours in Manchester.
ii. Within 14 days of the resumed hearing, the parties must upload to CE-File and directly serve on the other party any further evidence they intend to rely upon and skeleton arguments addressing whether the appellant’s residence in the Isle of Man qualifies as lawful residence for the purposes of the 2002 Act, as amended.

P Lodato

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

2 June 2026