Tribunal decisions

The decision

Upper Tribunal
(Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Appeal Number: UI-2026-000855
First-tier Tribunal Number: PA/56152/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued

27th May 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE WOODCRAFT

Between

NG
(Anonymity order made)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:

For the Appellant: Mr O Sobowale, Counsel
For the Respondent: Ms S Lecointe, Home Office Presenting Officer

DECISION AND REASONS

Heard at Field House on 30 April 2026

The Appellant

1. The appellant is a citizen of Albania born on 8 July 1994. He appeals against the decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Ferguson dated 13 November 2025 who dismissed the appellant’s appeal against a decision of the respondent dated 23 February 2024. The respondent’s decision was to refuse the appellant's application for international protection and for leave to remain under the Human Rights Convention. The appellant made an application for asylum on 24 March 2021. His claim was referred to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) which made a positive Conclusive Grounds decision on 13 October 2023 that the appellant had been the victim of trafficking. The respondent nevertheless refused him permission to stay in the United Kingdom on that basis.

Order Regarding Anonymity.

2. Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellant is granted anonymity, and is to be referred to in these proceedings by the initials NG. 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.

The Appellant’s Case

3. The appellant claimed to be in fear of an individual called Mr Ali Bisha. The judge summarised the appellant's case at [2] of the determination writing:

“… in November 2019 [the appellant] borrowed €25,000 from a man in Albania called Ali Bisha so that he could pay for his father and brother to have operations and to repair damage to the family home. No detailed arrangements were made about how he was to repay the loan but he intended to do it within 2 years by working. In around January 2021 Ali Bisha realised that [the appellant] was not going to be able to repay the loan so Ali Bisha threatened [the appellant] and said that the conditions were that he now had to work for him to repay the loan. Mr Bisha said that [the appellant] should transport drugs for him and work as a male escort. [The appellant] refused [and was told he] did not have to take part in any drug activity but was forced on one occasion into sex work. Mr Bisha then trafficked [the appellant] to the UK to work in a house in Reading where cannabis was being farmed. [The appellant] managed to escape after only one day there by jumping out of a window. He made contact with his sister who resides in the UK and claimed asylum a few days later. “

4. The appellant relied on a report dated 28 October 2024 of Sally Montier, an expert on human trafficking who works for the Poppy Project. The appellant was said to be vulnerable on account of his mental health issues. A psychologist report identified a risk of self-harm and suicide. It was accepted that the evidence of mental health did not meet the high threshold for Article 3 but there was conflicting evidence of the risk of suicide. The appellant had the support of his sister in the United Kingdom. While medication and medical treatment would be available in Albania, the issue was whether without the emotional support he has in the United Kingdom that would increase his risk of suicide.

The Decision at First Instance

5. At [32] of the determination the judge found that the appellant’s circumstances showed that he was a member of a particular social group as a man who has been trafficked which is an immutable characteristic. The judge found that the appellant fabricated his evidence about the power and reach of Ali Bisha in order to bolster his claim. The appellant was inconsistent about seeking help from the police. The appellant had not established that he would be at risk of retrafficking. The appellant was aged 30, educated to university level and had family support. At [50] the judge concluded that there would be sufficient protection for the appellant because the persons he feared did not have the power to act with impunity nor had connections to the state. The European Court of Human Rights had found that there is sufficient protection in Albania even from criminal gangs. The circumstances in the case of AD and Others v Sweden 22283/21 [2024] ECHR 402 were even more serious than those of the appellant.

6. The expert Ms Montier had concluded that the appellant was vulnerable to re-trafficking either by the same group or by completely new traffickers. Although the judge took into account her opinion, he noted that he had considered a wider range of evidence than she had and he reached a different conclusion to her on those factors. It was not necessary to consider internal relocation because the appellant had no need to relocate. The appellant did not meet the threshold to engage Article 3 on medical grounds. The evidence did not show that he would be at risk of serious rapid irreversible decline as a result of an absence or lack of accessibility to treatment.

7. The medical evidence was consistent about the appellant’s suicidal ideation which was considered “fleeting” in July 2024 and was not present in July 2025. Medication would be available in Albania. The appellant had changed his evidence in relation to his Article 8 claim, see [59]. There would be no significant obstacles to his return. At [65] the judge concluded:

“In summary, [the appellant] has been the victim of two crimes in Albania having been sexually exploited in Albania and trafficked to the UK. Those are serious events which of course have adversely affected him. But he has not established that there is a reasonable degree of likelihood that these will occur again on his return to Albania and if he believes they will he can seek the protection of the authorities there rather than require international protection.”

The judge dismissed the appeal.

The Onward Appeal

8. The appellant appealed against this decision arguing that the judge did not give anxious scrutiny to the fact that the appellant was accepted as a Victim of trafficking by the CA nor to the overwhelming evidence in the Trafficking report of the risk from the current traffickers and potential new traffickers. That report also recognised that corruption continued to be a widespread problem and that criminal gangs had ties to the police. Albania was a relatively small country and that it is “entirely plausible that a person might be traced via family or other connections being made on enquiry in Tirana.”

9. Permission was granted by the First-tier on the basis that there was an arguable failure to grasp and assess the question of risk to an accepted victim of trafficking not from the original traffickers but from others by reason of the vulnerability present in those who have already been trafficked. There was arguably a failure to engage with risk, sufficiency of protection and internal relocation and arguably insufficient reference to the CPIN including actors of protection. It was odd for the judge not to have engaged at all with the reasonableness of relocation on the basis there was no risk when the judge had engaged with sufficiency of protection.

The Hearing Before Me

10. In consequence of the grant of permission the matter came before me to determine in the first place whether there was a material error of law in the decision of the First-tier Tribunal such that it fell to be set aside. If there was then I would make directions on the rehearing of the appeal. If there was not the decision at first instance would stand.

11. For the appellant Counsel relied on the grounds of appeal. There had been a failure to deal adequately with the issue of trafficking. The judge had before him a trafficking report (from Ms Montier). She went into more detail than the judge. There was a spectrum affecting risk. The expert outlined 11 factors that demonstrated a real risk of re-trafficking. None of those factors related to the credibility of the appellant's account of what he said happened to him. The trafficking of males was widespread and had surpassed the trafficking of females in recent years. The expert dealt with organised crime gangs. One could contrast the detail of her findings with the conclusions reached by the judge. The judge had premised his determination on the absence of risk of re-trafficking without taking into account the expert's opinion on that risk.

12. It was not clear if the judge had in fact taken into consideration any information regarding trafficking even though it had been found on the balance of probabilities that the appellant was a victim of that. The appellant came from a poor area of Albania and people there were susceptible to being trafficked. There was no reason given for rejecting the expert's report. Part of the burden of proof rested on the appellant but the balance rested on the respondent. The judge had given no adequate reasons for his conclusions. The appellant's position was that his evidence had not been considered accurately.

13. Independent of the credibility assessment by the judge there was a separate assessment of the appellant’s circumstances more generally. These had not been disputed by either the judge or the respondent. The judge came to the view that the appellant could only say he was at risk because of an unexpected event but there were other factors relied upon which showed that the appellant was at risk of re-trafficking.

14. There were some factual errors in the determination, the judge had described the appellant as university educated but he had dropped out and could not find work paying him more than $150 per month. It could not be said that by reason of his age or education that he was less likely to fall prey to traffickers.

15. In response the presenting officer argued that the appellant's grounds of appeal were no more than a disagreement with the result. The judge had not rejected the appellant's account because the appellant had not reported to the police but instead the judge took into account that there were material inconsistencies in the appellant's account for example Mr Bisha’s alleged connection to the police. This was raised in the respondent's review. The judge was entitled to reach the conclusions on credibility that he did. There was a positive report from the NRM, and the judge had attached appropriate weight to the NRM decision but there were still matters to be considered before the appellant’s claim could succeed. There was a sufficiency of protection in Albania. There had been fabrication of evidence.

16. The respondent relied on the authority of Volpi v Volpi [2022] EWCA Civ 464. It was not necessary for a judge to set out each and every piece of evidence in the case. One could assume that the judge had taken into account all relevant facts. The weight to be attached was a matter for the judge. An appeal court should not interfere with the trial judge's conclusions on primary facts unless it is satisfied that [the judge] was plainly wrong. What matters is whether the decision under appeal is one that no reasonable judge could have reached

17. In conclusion Counsel said that Volpi made the appellant's case for him. Were there reasons to believe that the judge had not taken into account all relevant evidence? In this case there were. One only had to look at the way the judge had dealt with the expert's evidence.

Discussion and Findings

18. Although the initial criticism of the judge's determination in the grounds of onward appeal was wide-ranging the issues in this case were somewhat narrowed at the hearing before me. They turn on the question of whether the judge paid sufficient attention to the expert's report and whether the judge had correctly analysed the evidence in this case. Part of the appellant's onward grounds of appeal are as the respondent suggests, no more than a disagreement with the result. I remind myself that the judge had the benefit of seeing the appellant give evidence and be questioned on it. The judge was not obliged to agree with the expert but given Ms Montier’s level of expertise it was incumbent upon the judge to explain why he departed from the conclusions reached by the expert.
19. The appellant had been trafficked seemingly for two reasons, firstly that he had been asked on one occasion to be a male escort and secondly that he was asked to carry drugs for an individual to whom he owed money (although in the event he did not carry any drugs). The judge took issue with the appellant's credibility in part because the appellant's account had changed during the course of the proceedings. The judge concluded as he was entitled to do that this lack of consistency undermined the general credibility of the appellant.

20. The appellant's complaint is that the judge in doing so did not take into consideration the lengthy and detailed report of the expert who found that the appellant was at risk of re-trafficking for reasons other than those arising from the appellant's account. In other words even if the appellant lacked credibility in his account, the background circumstances of the appellant which were accepted were such that the appellant would be at risk because he was vulnerable. He had been trafficked and there would be social stigma attached to the fact that he was trafficked. This was one of the conclusions reached by the Upper Tribunal in the unreported decision cited by the appellant in his grounds of onward appeal.

21. The appellant came from a poor area and he had dropped out of university I do not accept the judge was necessarily wrong in his conclusion that the appellant was educated to university level. The appellant does seem to have attended university even if he did not complete the course. He presumably had started a course in order to have something from which he dropped out. The judge accepted that the appellant was a member of a particular social group which in fact was the main point in issue in the unreported case referred to in the appellant's onward grounds.

22. The question before the judge was whether in the future the appellant would be at risk upon return to Albania. The judge noted at [52] that he had taken Ms Montier’s evidence into account, nevertheless he had considered a wider range of evidence than she had. There was a difficulty about the appellant's evidence in particular the very different account he gave to the expert than the account he gave to the judge in oral evidence. To the expert the appellant had said that he had not made a complaint to the police about Mr Bisha because he had seen that gentleman drinking coffee with the local police and thus assumed that they would be on Mr Bisha's side. However, when he came to give his oral testimony at the hearing the appellant gave a very different account. He now stated that he had made an official report to the police about the problems he had endured.

23. Both these statements could not be correct. The expert had based part at least of her report on evidence that was inconsistent with what else remained of the appellant's account. In those circumstances it was reasonable for the judge to say that the evidence before him showed the appellant could complain to the police who would act notwithstanding the expert’s conclusion that there was little purpose in a complaint to the police who had failed to act on what the appellant had said before. The judge was faced with a clear contradiction in the appellant's evidence which he took into account in his overall credibility assessment.

24. The point made on the appellant's behalf in oral submissions to me was that even if the appellant had lacked credibility in his evidence because of inconsistencies, nevertheless the factors which put him at risk of being re-trafficked were to do with the appellant's background circumstances and had nothing to do with the appellant's credibility. I do not accept that this is an adequate criticism of the First-tier Tribunal's decision. Whether the part of Albania which the appellant comes from is poor or prosperous does not depend on anything the appellant says. The risk of re-trafficking on the grounds of vulnerability however is something which is part and parcel of the appellant himself. If the appellant's evidence is inconsistent leading to a lack of credibility it is difficult for him to discharge the burden upon him of showing that he is at risk due to vulnerability. The judge did not consider the appellant to be vulnerable finding that the appellant had family support.

25. The unreported decision of ES UI-2025-000360 cited in the grounds is of limited assistance because the judge in the case before me found that the appellant was a member of a particular social group which had been the main issue in ES. ES reminds judges that the risk of stigma for a victim of trafficking arises from societal attitudes as well as family attitudes. In this case where the appellant has family support as the judge found, the risk to the appellant from vulnerability is substantially diminished.

26. Although the grounds complained that there has been a procedural irregularity in that the appellant was questioned at first instance about his passport without being shown the document itself. This occurred during the course of the hearing when the appellant was represented. Since neither the appellant nor the respondent produced the document during the course of questioning it was open to the judge to leave matters like that rather than risk entering the arena by taking an inquisitorial approach in demanding to see the appellant’s passport or other documents. There is thus no merit in this ground of appeal and is an example of a mere disagreement. As the judge had not found the appellant to be at risk upon return, he did not consider it necessary to analyse the possibility of internal relocation. The judge evidently felt that the issue of relocation stood or fell with whether the appellant had a fear of harm from Mr Bisha and/or society at large. If the appellant could not show such a risk the question of internal relocation would not arise. Given the evidence in this case that was a finding that was open to the judge.

27. In relation to article 8, this to a large extent stood or fell with the appellant's complaint under article 3. The medical evidence did not reach the article 3 threshold for the reasons given by the judge (and was agreed by the parties). The appellant's risk of suicide had considerably diminished and the medication which the appellant was taking in this country was available in Albania. The appellant had a sister in the United Kingdom upon whom he depended according to his evidence, but no one came to give evidence and be questioned on the appellant's behalf. The issue to be resolved about the appellant’s article 8 claim was therefore not whether the appellant had established a private and family life which would be interfered with by his removal but rather whether there were substantial obstacles to his return.

28. Since the appellant's claim to adverse treatment under article 3 failed there was nothing else to indicate that the appellant could not reintegrate into Albania. He spoke the language and had spent most of his life there and his family were there. The issue as to Article 8 was not pursued before me with any force.

29. This was a detailed determination in which the judge very carefully set out the evidence produced to him. It is well established that it is not incumbent upon a judge to set out each and every piece of evidence in the case. To do so would make judgements unnecessarily long. The judge had carefully considered the expert's report, disagreed with some of what the expert had said and gave his reasons why he disagreed. The judge had evidently looked at the evidence as a whole including the expert reports before arriving at his final conclusions, see for example [35] and [36] where the judge indicated how he proposed to set out his analysis of the evidence thus showing that he had considered it all before arriving at his conclusions.

30. Although the grounds complained that the expert had raised 11 factors that could lead to risk on return, the judge notes at [34] that there were five main issues he had to decide. It was open to the judge to narrow down the relevant points before making his decision on them. The expert’s report at paragraph 74 in fact runs to 22 examples of factors that can show trafficking. What is important is that at [52] the judge explains he has taken the expert’s views into account but is considering a wider range of evidence than the expert. I do not find that there was any material error of law in this determination and I dismiss the appellant's onward appeal.

Notice of Decision

The decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve the making of an error of law and I uphold the decision to dismiss the Appellant’s appeal

Appellant’s appeal dismissed

Signed this 11th day of May 2026

……………………………………………….
Judge Woodcraft
Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge