Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-001159
First-tier Tribunal No: HU/63279/2023

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 20th of October 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE NEVILLE

Between

PETRIT BRAHAJ
(NO ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr A Jafar, counsel instructed by Norton Folgate Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr M Pugh, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 3 July 2026

DECISION AND REASONS

1. The appellant is a 51 year old national of Albania. He entered the United Kingdom unlawfully in 1998 and claimed asylum, initially in a false identity and as a national of Kosovo. He withdrew that claim and pursued a further claim in his true name, but continued to claim to be Kosovan. His appeal was allowed and he was granted indefinite leave to remain as a refugee on 13 November 2000. In 2009 the respondent gave notice of an intention to revoke his refugee status after learning that he was Albanian. No action followed at that stage. He was issued with no-time-limit indefinite leave to remain on 4 February 2019. His refugee status was later revoked on 23 September 2023.
2. On 10 June 2022, at Aylesbury Crown Court, the appellant pleaded guilty to acquiring, using or possessing criminal property. The offence concerned the laundering of £132,000 derived from drug dealing over a period principally between 2016 and 2017. On 8 July 2022 he was sentenced to 28 months’ imprisonment.
3. On 10 June 2022, at Aylesbury Crown Court, the appellant pleaded guilty to acquiring, using or possessing criminal property. The offence concerned the laundering of £132,000 derived from drug dealing over a period principally between 2016 and 2017. On 8 July 2022 he was sentenced to 28 months’ imprisonment.
4. The respondent notified the appellant of the decision to deport him on 1 October 2022. A deportation order was made on 1 November 2023 and, on the same date, the respondent refused his human rights claim. The appellant appealed on Article 8 grounds.
5. The respondent notified the appellant of the decision to deport him on 1 October 2022. A deportation order was made on 1 November 2023 and, on the same date, the respondent refused his human rights claim. The appellant appealed on Article 8 grounds.
6. The issues before the First-tier Tribunal (“FtT”) were whether either statutory exception to deportation applied and, if not, whether there were very compelling circumstances such that the public interest in deportation was outweighed. Under Exception 1, the disputed questions were whether the appellant was socially and culturally integrated in the United Kingdom and whether there would be very significant obstacles to his integration in Albania. Under Exception 2, the FtT had to decide whether he had a genuine and subsisting parental relationship with his partner’s children and whether his deportation would be unduly harsh for his partner or those children.
7. In a decision promulgated on 2 April 2025, the FtT dismissed the appeal. It found that the appellant had not been lawfully resident in the United Kingdom for most of his life, was no longer socially and culturally integrated here, and would not face very significant obstacles to integration in Albania. It accepted that he had a genuine and subsisting relationship with his partner and a parental relationship with her minor daughter, but found that the effect of his deportation would not be unduly harsh. It further found that there were no very compelling circumstances capable of outweighing the public interest in deportation.
8. I take each ground of appeal against the FtT’s decision in turn. I refer to paragraphs in the decision without express regard to the apparent errors in their numbering; in context it is obvious which paragraph is meant.
Ground 1 – Social and cultural integration
9. Under this ground, the appellant the FtT failed to assess his cultural and social integration by reference to his ties to the UK, including employment relationships and community involvement, as set out in CI Nigeria v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 2027; in particular, the FtT erred in finding that a single offence was sufficient to sever two decades of integrative ties.
10. The FtT’s assessment began as follows:
23. I find that the Appellant is no longer socially and culturally integrated into the UK and has not been since he started offending in 2015.
24. It is finely balanced as to whether he was ever socially and culturally integrated into the UK as he had entered illegally and made an application in a false name and claiming to be Kosovan. He then withdrew the asylum claim made in the false name and claimed under his real name but still claimed to be a Kosovan national. His appeal was allowed as a Kosovan refugee and he was granted ILR in 2000. In 2009 the Appellant was served with a notice of an intention to revoke his refugee status as the British Embassy in Tirana had received an application for the Appellant’s wife and noted that the Appellant was claiming to be Albanian. The revocation was not pursued as he was granted a No Time Limit ILR on Article 8 grounds on 04 February 2019 and eventually his refugee status was revoked in 2023 as it was noted that he had obtained an Albanian passport and had been returning to his home country for many years. It is indeed arguable that continuing to live and exercise a private life in the UK after having made a false asylum claim is not consistent with being socially and culturally integrated into the UK. On the other hand it is relevant that he has lived in the UK since 1998, speaks English and has been employed for many years within the UK. On balance, I find that he was socially and culturally integrated into the UK until 2015 when he commenced a serious offence of money laundering which continued until 2018. Mr Jaffar said in submissions that the offence was serious but not very serious and only involved £132,000 of money laundering which is at the low end of the scale of money laundering. Having read the sentencing judge’s remarks I do not accept that the Appellant’s offending was at the less serious scale of offending. He pleaded guilty and was convicted of laundering the proceeds of drug dealing. The offending took place over a considerable period, from January 2015 until July 2018 and the seriousness of the offence is reflected in the sentence of 28 months imprisonment after a 20% credit for his guilty plea. What perhaps is of greater concern is that the Appellant continues to deny that he did anything wrong. In his oral evidence when he was asked about the OASYS report entry in which it stated that he did not recognise the consequences of his offending on society/the community, his response was:
“Nothing to do with me. I was naïve to trust people. Everywhere I went I respect everybody and I used to keep the peace everywhere I worked...”
11. The FtT then described how the appellant had likewise claimed in the criminal proceedings not to have known that the money was the proceeds of drug sales, but that this had been categorically rejected by the sentencing judge. The FtT accordingly found as follows:
26. Having heard the oral evidence of the Appellant and on considering all of the evidence within the bundle, including the sentencing judge’s remarks, I find that the Appellant lacks credibility and I am not able to accept that he was not involved in money laundering over a significant period of three years or that he had no awareness that the proceeds came from illegal activities or that he was unaware that what he was doing was illegal. The Appellant pleaded guilty and I am surprised that the Appellant is seeking to go behind his conviction and sentence served. His failure to accept his offending behaviour is of concern and I find that his previous social and cultural integration in the UK was severed at the point of the start of his offending behaviour in 2015. He received a prison sentence of 28 months, which is a lengthy prison sentence reflecting the seriousness of the offence. Whilst he has not reoffended since release from prison, I do not accept that he has regained social and cultural integration in the UK as he continues to not be aware of the seriousness of his offending and that what he was involved in was illegal. I reject his explanation about the money being related to buying and selling cars and I do not find him to be credible.
12. It is clear that in its above analysis the FtT sought to apply the following guidance of the Court of Appeal in CI (Nigeria), per Leggatt LJ:
58. Relevant social ties obviously include relationships with friends and relatives, as well as ties formed through employment or other paid or unpaid work or through participation in communal activities. However, a person's social identity is not defined solely by such particular relationships but is constituted at a deep level by familiarity with and participation in the shared customs, traditions, practices, beliefs, values, linguistic idioms and other local knowledge which situate a person in a society or social group and generate a sense of belonging. The importance of upbringing and education in the formation of a person's social identity is well recognised, and its importance in the context of cases involving the article 8 rights of persons facing expulsion because of criminal offending has been recognised by the European Court. Thus, in the Üner case at para 58, the court considered it "self-evident" that, in assessing the strength of a foreign national's ties with the "host" country in which they are living, regard is to be had to "the special situation of aliens who have spent most, if not all, of their childhood in the host country, were brought up there and received their education there."
13. The FtT takes into account each of the indicators cited. On the effect of criminal offending, the Court held at [60]-[61] that an appellant facing deportation cannot place positive reliance on criminal associations to demonstrate social and cultural integration, that time spent leading a criminal lifestyle could mean that they have fewer social relationships and areas of activity capable of attracting the protection of private life, and that:
61. …Periods of imprisonment represent time spent excluded from society during which the prisoner has little opportunity to develop social and cultural ties and which may weaken or sever previously established ties and make it harder to re-establish them or develop new ties (for example, by finding employment) upon release. In such ways criminal offending and consequent imprisonment may affect whether a person is socially and culturally integrated in the UK.
14. Mr Jafar argued that the FtT lost sight of the Court’s subsequent warning at [62] that the impact of offending and imprisonment will also depend on “whether and how deeply the individual was socially and culturally integrated in the UK to begin with”, and:
62. … In that regard, a person who has lived all or almost all his life in the UK, has been educated here, speaks no language other than (British) English and has no familiarity with any other society or culture will start with much deeper roots in this country than someone who has moved here at a later age. It is hard to see how criminal offending and imprisonment could ordinarily, by themselves and unless associated with the breakdown of relationships, destroy the social and cultural integration of someone whose entire social identity has been formed in the UK. …
15. I disagree. The FtT gave credit for the appellant’s prior social and cultural integration, and was plainly entitled to reduce its weight by reason of it having been procured by the fraudulent Kosovan identity. That weight was also informed by the findings on the appellant’s conviction bespeaking conduct committed over several years, which were undoubtedly open to the FtT on the evidence. The conclusion that imprisonment severed those qualified integrative links does not offend per se against anything said in CI (Nigeria); unlike the example given at [62] the appellant moved to the UK when he was (or was about) 23 years old, and while he left Albania as a teenager he cannot be described as someone whose cultural and social identity was formed entirely in this country.
16. The FtT’s reliance on denial of guilt as evidencing lack of integration did not, contrary to the appellant’s next argument, wrongly conflate integration with rehabilitation. In the context of its finding that the appellant’s criminality was sustained over a significant period of time, the FtT was entitled to treat his ongoing denial of guilt as undermining his evidence of having re-formed his reintegrative links since he was imprisoned.
17. The FtT’s decision is to be considered benevolently rather than hyper-critically, on the assumption that the FtT is aware of and has applied the correct authorities unless its reasoning betrays otherwise. Read fairly and as a whole, nothing in the FtT’s reasons suggests that it lost sight of the requirement to assess the strength of pre-offending ties, the extent to which they were severed by imprisonment, and whether they had been re-formed in the time between his release and the hearing.
Ground 2 – Very significant obstacles to integration
18. The FtT found that the appellant would face no very significant obstacles to reintegration in Albania. He was an adult of working age who had spent his youth there, had made regular subsequent visits, spoke Albanian, understood Albanian life and society, had family there who could assist him, and retained strong cultural, family and social connections. There was no persuasive medical or other evidence showing an inability to work or reintegrate, and the absence of his partner and children from Albania did not alter that conclusion.
19. The appellant’s arguments under this ground can be properly characterised as simply disagreeing with the FtT’s analysis. No error is disclosed in the FtT’s reasoning; in the absence of any evidence to undermine the listed factors, it was entitled to treat them as supporting a conclusion that the appellant would not face very significant obstacles to integration. As it observed, no obstacles to integration were raised in the appellant’s evidence capable of being “very significant”. It referred to the relevant guidance in Kamara v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] EWCA Civ 813 at [14], with which its reasoning accords.
Ground 3: Risk of reoffending and rehabilitation
20. The appellant argues that in addressing whether there were very compelling circumstances, the FtT materially misunderstood the evidence concerning his risk of reoffending. At [29], it stated that the March 2023 OASys report did not classify the risk as low, medium or high, and relied on a probation officer’s email of 21 March 2024 referring to a “medium risk”. The appellant relies on the pre-sentence report, which described the OGRS score of 30% as a low probability of reconviction within two years, and on the OASys assessment recording the same score. He submits that the reference to “medium risk” by a probation officer was an error, particularly as the probation officer stated that there had been no change in the assessment. In support of that error, a letter is provided dated 2 July 2026 from the probation service, confirming to the appellant that “based on the information available at the time of the assessment, you were assessed as presenting a Low Risk of Serious Harm to the public, children, staff, known adults, and yourself.” I grant permission to rely on this post-decision evidence, which is probative as to whether the FtT was unknowingly misled by the March 2024 email; Mr Pugh did not object.
21. The appellant argues that the mistake affected the FtT’s treatment of rehabilitation and the proportionality balance. The FtT gave very little weight to the appellant’s conduct in prison, completion of a course, absence of further offending and assessed low risk of serious harm, while placing weight on his continued denial of guilt. By contrast, it is argued, the evidence actually showed a low likelihood of reoffending and positive rehabilitation capable of carrying some weight under HA (Iraq) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] UKSC 22 at [58]. The error was therefore material to the FtT’s assessment of the public interest and, in turn, whether there were very compelling circumstances.
22. In HA (Iraq), the Supreme Court set out how rehabilitation should be treated as a factor when assessing whether there are very compelling circumstances:
58. Given that the weight to be given to any relevant factor in the proportionality assessment will be a matter for the fact-finding tribunal, no definitive statement can be made as to what amount of weight should or should not be given to any particular factor. It will necessarily depend on the facts and circumstances of the case. I do not, however, consider that there is any great difference between what was stated in Binbuga and by the Court of Appeal in this case. In a case where the only evidence of rehabilitation is the fact that no further offences have been committed then, in general, that is likely to be of little or no material weight in the proportionality balance. If, on the other hand, there is evidence of positive rehabilitation which reduces the risk of further offending then that may have some weight as it bears on one element of the public interest in deportation, namely the protection of the public from further offending. Subject to that clarification, I would agree with Underhill LJ’s summary of the position at para 141 of his judgment:
“What those authorities seem to me to establish is that the fact that a potential deportee has shown positive evidence of rehabilitation, and thus of a reduced risk of re-offending, cannot be excluded from the overall proportionality exercise. The authorities say so, and it must be right in principle in view of the holistic nature of that exercise. Where a tribunal is able to make an assessment that the foreign criminal is unlikely to re-offend, that is a factor which can carry some weight in the balance when considering very compelling circumstances. The weight which it will bear will vary from case to case, but it will rarely be of great weight bearing in mind that, as Moore-Bick LJ says in Danso, the public interest in the deportation of criminals is not based only on the need to protect the public from further offending by the foreign criminal in question but also on wider policy considerations of deterrence and public concern. I would add that tribunals will properly be cautious about their ability to make findings on the risk of re-offending, and will usually be unable to do so with any confidence based on no more than the undertaking of prison courses or mere assertions of reform by the offender or the absence of subsequent offending for what will typically be a relatively short period.”
23. I accept that the FtT appears to have taken the factual position before is as being that “there is no indication that [the appellant] has reduced from a medium risk of re-offending to [a] low risk of re-offending” in accordance with the March 2024 email. Whether framed as a mistake of fact of the type discussed in E v Secretary of State for Home Department [2004] EWCA Civ 49 at [63], or as a finding not properly open to the FtT on the evidence, an error of law is established in the FtT’s decision.
24. Was that error material to the outcome? After giving credit for the appellant’s good behaviour in prison, and noting the lack of any re-offending, the FtT’s reasoning was as follows:
29. I note the contents of the OASYS report dated 31 March 2023 which assesses him as a 17% risk of general reoffending within 1 year and 30% risk of general offending within 2 years, which is the same percentages within the pre-sentence report dated 20 June 2022. I accept that the continued denial of guilt was taken into account by the pre-sentence report writer and the OASYS report writer and I accept that the refusal to accept guilt has already been factored into the risk percentages provided and does not require separate consideration. I find that the OASYS report does not provide a low, medium or high risk of re-offending but I note that the probation officer email dated 21 March 2024 refers to the Appellant being assessed as a Medium risk. The probation officer stated that there are no concerns to suggest an increased risk of serious harm but there is no indication that he has reduced from a medium risk of re-offending to low risk of re- offending.
30. In assessing the public interest, I give very little weight to the low risk of causing serious harm and lack of re-offending since release from prison and positive behaviour in and since release from prison because it does no more than demonstrate that the Appellant is doing what is expected of everyone in society. He continues to refuse to accept guilt for the offence that he committed and I am not persuaded that he is fully rehabilitated or that the risk of re-offending has reduced from 30%. I accept that rehabilitation is a relevant factor in the proportionality assessment as confirmed by the Supreme Court in HA (Iraq) v SSHD [2022] UKSC 22 but I find that there are no particular features of his claimed rehabilitation that would cause me to give it any great weight. It is not a factor that is capable of amounting to a very compelling circumstance either on its own or on a cumulative basis with the other factors relied upon.
25. I cannot see that the mistake was material to the FtT’s conclusions or, in other words, in the absence of that error the outcome would not have inevitably been the same: Osei-Bonsu v Secretary of State for The Home Department [2026] EWCA Civ 1304, at [71]-[72]. The FtT took the “low risk of causing serious harm and lack of re-offending” as providing “very little” positive weight because it “does no more than demonstrate that the Appellant is doing what is expected of everyone in society”; on the FtT’s approach the appellant accordingly received no less credit than if the prior “medium” label had not been misapplied to the risk he posed.
26. I also reject that the FtT’s reasoning was contrary to HA (Iraq). The Supreme Court held that:
58. …In a case where the only evidence of rehabilitation is the fact that no further offences have been committed then, in general, that is likely to be of little or no material weight in the proportionality balance. If, on the other hand, there is evidence of positive rehabilitation which reduces the risk of further offending then that may have some weight as it bears on one element of the public interest in deportation, namely the protection of the public from further offending. …
27. The FtT afforded “very little weight”, rather than no weight at all, and expressly gave credit for the appellant’s positive rehabilitative efforts. That assessment was a matter for the FtT, which had the benefit of considering all the evidence and argument before it, and its conclusion is consistent with the guidance in HA (Iraq).
28. Finally, I reject the argument that the FtT ‘double counted’ denial of guilt. It acknowledged that it was already built into the probation risk assessment and can be taken to have respected that when later attributing the distinct task of assessing the weight carried by rehabilitation at the date of the hearing.
29. No material error of law is established under this ground.
Ground 4 – Unduly harsh
30. The FtT found that while it would be unduly harsh on the appellant’s partner and her young daughter to relocate to Albania, given their British citizenship and the daughter’s relationship with her biological father in this country, but that it would not be unduly harsh on them to remain in the UK without the appellant. The appellant submits that the FtT misapplied the unduly harsh test, because despite accepting that he had a genuine and subsisting parental relationship with the child, had lived with her as a daily presence and that she had missed him during his imprisonment, it concluded that her response would be no more than the “normal emotional reaction” of a child separated from a step-parent. It is argued that this introduced the notional comparator or baseline of ordinariness rejected in HA (Iraq), rather than evaluating the actual effect on this child by reference to her age, attachment to the appellant, the loss of his day-to-day care and the likely duration of the separation.
31. The appellant further contends that the FtT wrongly treated the partner’s ability to cope during his imprisonment, together with the availability of support from family and friends and the possibility of visits and remote communication, as sufficient to answer the statutory question. A finite period of imprisonment was not equivalent to indefinite separation by deportation. The FtT is said to have minimised the emotional and practical consequences for the child and her mother, rather than confronting their particular circumstances and deciding whether those consequences crossed the elevated threshold required by section 117C(5).
32. I consider that while the FtT’s reference to a “normal emotional reaction” could have been better expressed differently, when read in context it simply reflects a finding that the evidence did not establish any particular consequence for this child capable of meeting the elevated statutory threshold. The FtT did not seek to expressly define a notional comparator, or to measure the child’s circumstances against an assumed ordinary case. At [35]-[42] the FtT instead gave detailed consideration to the child’s age, her relationship with the appellant, the care available from her mother and wider family, the absence of medical or welfare evidence, and the practicability of maintaining contact in light of the individual circumstances disclosed by the evidence, such as previous trips to Albania.
33. Nor did the FtT err by, at [39], taking account of the partner’s and child’s experience during the appellant’s imprisonment. The consequences of temporary separation were evidentially relevant to the likely effect of separation following deportation, for example in relation to future support and contact. Nowhere did the FtT treat the two situations as identical or show itself to be unaware that deportation would lead to a longer-term and more profound form of separation. The FtT was entitled to consider how the family had coped previously, alongside the other evidence. It did so to reach a conclusion that the consequences of the appellant’s deportation would not be so adverse to the child’s best interests as be unduly harsh, and it can be taken to have had regard to the positive aspects of the relationship between the two. No error of law is established under this ground.
Ground 5 – Very compelling circumstances
34. This ground depends to some extent on the challenges to the FtT’s reasoning already rejected above. On the two additional points argued by the appellant, I reject that the FtT failed to treat the existence of ‘very compelling circumstances’ as requiring a proportionality assessment or that its ultimate conclusion was not rationally open to it. At [31] the FtT the made clear that its task was to determine whether any “single factor, or combination of factors, relevant to his family and private life amount to very compelling circumstances such that the significant public interest in the deportation of the Appellant is outweighed”. It further confirmed that in doing so it applied all the findings previous made above, which plainly include those made by reference to the two exceptions.
Conclusion
35. There is no material error of law in the FtT’s decision.
Notice of Decision

(i) The appellant’s appeal to the Upper Tribunal is dismissed.
(ii) The decision of the First-tier Tribunal to dismiss the appellant’s appeal stands.

J Neville
Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

19 October 2026