Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-000232

First-tier Tribunal Nos: HU/58840/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 9 June 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE ZUCKER

Between

LK
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms S Sanders, of Counsel instructed by Fisher Stone Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms S Lecointe, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 21 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 or members of her family, likely to lead members of the public to identify the Appellant or members of her family. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS
1. The Appellant is a citizen of Iran, now aged 88 years of age, who on 13 December 2023 made application for entry clearance to the United Kingdom. On 15 July 2024 her application was refused.
2. The background to the Application is set out at paragraphs 3 and 4 of the Decision and Reasons of the First tier Tribunal Judge, now under appeal as follows:
“The Appellant seeks to enter the United Kingdom ("UK") on the basis of her relationship with her nephew and Sponsor, JK. The Appellant is 87 [as she then was]. Her case is that she began to care for her Sponsor when he was under a year old and lived with him continuously since then until he fled Iran in 2020. The Sponsor claimed asylum in the UK based on his conversion to Christianity and was granted asylum by the Respondent without any appeal. She continued to live with the Sponsor’s wife (ZK) and children until they came to join the Sponsor in the UK in August 2024. The Appellant applied for entry clearance, alongside the Sponsor’s wife and children, under the Refugee Family Reunion provisions. Only the Appellant’s application was refused.
The Respondent considered the application under the Family Reunion (Protection) Rules and refused the application for the following reasons. The Appellant was the Sponsor’s aunt. There was a lack of evidence of dependency. The decision was not unjustifiably harsh. There were no compelling compassionate circumstances.”
3. Not content with the Respondent’s decision, she appealed, on human rights grounds, to the First tier Tribunal. Her appeal was heard by a very experienced judge at Bradford on 12 September 2025. He dismissed the appeal on all grounds.
4. Application was then made to that same judge for permission to appeal on the basis that having found the Appellant to be a part of the Sponsor’s core family unit in Iran, consisting of the Sponsor, his wife, and children, he had (1) failed to have regard to the best interests of the children having regard to section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009; (2) Failed to provide adequate reasons in relation to the children’s best interests; and (3) Failed to provide adequate reasons in relation to availability of alternative support.
5. The judge refused permission stating:
“It is not arguable that I failed to properly consider the best interests of the children. I explicitly took these into account. I considered the impact on the children. I was entitled to find that the children’s best interests were met by living together with their parents in the UK. I was entitled to find that the Appellant would be provided with some support, and accommodation should she require it, by her family in Iran.”
He went on to say:
“The grounds amount to disagreement and identify no arguable error of law”.
6. Not content with that decision the application was renewed before this Tribunal with permission being granted on all grounds by Upper Tribunal Judge Ruddick on 16 February 2026. Thus, the matter comes before me.
7. In granting permission with respect to grounds (1) and (2) Judge Ruddick stated:
“The task before the FTT was to take into account all relevant evidence about the children, to make a finding as to where their best interests lie, and then to give their best interests appropriate weight in the article 8 balancing test. The task was not to make a binary decision about whether or not their best interests were “dependent” on their grandmother’s presence and then, if the answer was negative, to give no further consideration to the issue. It is arguable that either the FTT misdirected itself in law, or that it effectively made a finding that the grandmother’s presence would have no material impact on their best interests. If the latter, it is arguable that the FTT was required to give reasons for this finding, given that the sponsor, his wife, and their eldest child all provided witness statements asserting that the appellant’s absence was having an adverse effect on the children.”
8. Permission to appeal on the third ground was essentially conditional on the Appellant being able to point to evidence that was before the First tier Tribunal on that issue.
9. The leading case, identified in the grounds is the case of ZH (Tanzania) (FC) (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent) [2011] UKSC 4. That was a case in which a mother claimed that her removal from the United Kingdom would constitute a disproportionate interference with her right to respect for her private and family life with the overarching issue being the weight to be given to the best interests of children affected by the decision to remove or deport one or both of their parents from the United Kingdom
10. The leading judgement was given by Lady Hale, who said:
“In making the proportionality assessment under article 8, the best interests of the child must be a primary consideration. This means that they must be considered first. They can, of course, be outweighed by the cumulative effect of other considerations.”
11. It was also said on the case of ZH that the children are not a “trump” card.
Upper Tribunal Hearing
Grounds 1 & 2
12. It is to be remembered that the finding of an error of law is not sufficient to set aside a decision of the First-tier Tribunal. The error must also be “material” (see ASO (Iraq) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWCA Civ 1282).
13. The part of the Decision and Reasons to which particular objection was taken with respect to the first two grounds of appeal is to be found at paragraph 19 in which the judge stated:
“…I accept that the Sponsor’s children would like the Appellant to join them in the UK. Their best interests are met by living with both their parents and are not dependent upon the Appellant’s presence in the UK.”
14. I agree with Judge Ruddick that on its face it appears as if the judge looked only at dependency rather than take an holistic view of the best interests of the children. However in considering whether, if that were the case, any error was material, I invited Ms Sanders to tell me how, based upon the evidence that was before the Judge, and accepting that family life had been found to exist with no exception to that finding being taken by the Respondent (the Rule 24 Notice took no point on that) she thought the judge should have set matters out.
15. Not surprisingly she struggled to suggest more than was pointed to by the judge. Her response, which in fairness was to be anticipated because in reality there was little more that was available to the Judge was to say that the best interests of the children was to be with the aunt.
16. The reality was that there was no sufficient evidence that could be added to the judge’s considerations. The evidence from the Sponsor, his wife and the elder child was that they were all (including the children) very close to the Appellant and were very upset to be separated from her. The judge was clearly aware of that. He said so, “I accept that the Appellant’s separation from the Sponsor and his family is a source of sorrow for them all”. That clearly came from the evidence with which the judge also clearly engaged. There was, for example, no sufficient evidence of a deleterious effect on the children’s health or ability in other ways to function.
17. It is also of note that whilst the judge found the Appellant to be part of the core family, she did not, as the judge found, come within the core family for the purposes of the immigration rules. The Decision in this case predates the publication of the case of IA [2005] EWCA Civ 1516, which empathises the considerable weight to be given to the need for immigration control and respect for the Respondent’s policies with the best interest of children to be given some weight but clearly not of itself the determining factor. Reading the decision as a whole the judge carefully considered the competing factors of public and private interest.
Ground 3
18. As to the third ground concerning alternative support, Ms Sanders agreed that a judge was not bound to accept evidence just because it was put before them. The judge was entitled to draw inferences from the evidence. The findings made were not made in a vacuum. The judge noted that the Sponsor had five siblings in Iran as well as his own mother. It was open to the judge to find, even with difficulties with transferring funds from the United Kingdom to Iran, that the Appellant would have recourse to sufficient support noting also from the evidence that the Appellant was also receiving appropriate medical support. As it was permission to appeal on the third ground was made conditional on the Appellant demonstrating that there was evidence on this issue that was material enough that the First tier Tribunal was required to deal with it. When reminded of this Ms Sanders told me that she was not particularly relying on the third ground but for the avoidance of doubt I do not find it made out.
19. Pulling the various strands together whilst I find that the judge might have expressed himself differently so as not to give the impression that there was a binary decision to be made, such error was not material in this case because there was no other sufficient evidence to put in the mix. This was a case in which the Appellant was disappointed by the decision. It was ultimately a decision for the judge what weight was to be given to the family life that was found to exist when “weighed” in the proportionality assessment but the grounds, as I have said do not lead to any material error of law.
Decision
The appeal to the Upper Tribunal is dismissed on all grounds and the Decision of the First- tier Tribunal shall stand.

D G Zucker
Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

22 May 2026