Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case Nos: UI-2026-001456
& UI-2026-001457

First-tier Tribunal Nos:
HU/55346/2024
LH/01148/2025
HU/55347/2024
LH/01147/2025

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 21 August 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE NEVILLE

Between

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Appellant
and

(1) C1
(2) C2
(ANONYMITY DIRECTION MADE)
Respondents

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr P Deller, Senior Presenting Officer
For the Respondent: Ms U Dirie, counsel instructed by BMAP

Heard at Field House on 4 June 2026

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the respondents are 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. This appeal concerns an application for entry clearance made by two Ethiopian children in February 2023. While the passage of time means that they are now both adults, the refugee status of their family members in the United Kingdom and the overall circumstances justify making an anonymity order. I refer to the applicants as C1 and C2 or together “the children”, while bearing in mind that they are now adults. Their application was refused by an Entry Clearance Officer (“ECO”) on 2 April 2024 and their appeal to the First-tier Tribunal (“FtT”) was allowed on 18 January 2026. The ECO now appeals the FtT’s decision to the Upper Tribunal.
2. The FtT summarised the account put forward in support of the appeal as follows: (I have made slight amendments to preserve anonymity)
a. C1 and C2, who are citizens of Ethiopia, were orphaned in November 2009, when they were four and two years old, their parents being killed in a road traffic collision. They were sent to an orphanage.
b. In or around the beginning of 2010, C1 and C2 were removed from the orphanage by a man to whom I refer in this decision as the “sponsor”. At the time, he was 19 years old and a professional athlete. He agreed with the local authority that he would adopt the Appellants and took them to live with him in Addis Ababa.
c. In 2014, the sponsor met Mrs S and on 8 February 2015, they were married. The sponsor told Mrs S when they met that he had two adopted children, and they were happy to raise them together.
d. However, in July 2015, the sponsor was forced to flee Ethiopia because of his political allegiance. He travelled via a number of countries to the UK, arriving on 24 January 2018. He was granted asylum later that year.
e. The sponsor was not in touch with Mrs S or the children from when he left Ethiopia until August 2022, when he discovered that they too had left Ethiopia and were living in Uganda. They regained contact through the Ethiopian community and the sponsor visited them in Uganda the following month.
f. In February 2023, Mrs S and the children made an application to join the sponsor in the UK under Appendix Family Reunion (Sponsors with Protection) to the Immigration Rules. Mrs S’s application was allowed and she joined the Appellant in the UK in June 2024, but children’s applications were refused on 2 April 2024. It is those refusals, maintained by review of 19 December 2024, which give rise to these appeals before the Tribunal. The children have remained in Uganda, living with a neighbour.
3. The ECO disbelieved aspects of that account, but having heard evidence the FtT accepted it save to find that the sponsor’s adoption of the children was not legally recognised. As a result, it held that:
15. Refusal under FRP.5.1. was accordingly correct. However, it does not appear that the Respondent went on to consider FRP.7.1. ("Where an applicant does not meet all the suitability or eligibility requirements ... , the decision maker must consider, on the basis of the information provided by the applicant, whether there are exceptional circumstances which would make a refusal of the application a breach of Article 8 of the ECHR, because such refusal would result in unjustifiably harsh consequences for the applicant or their family member, whose Article 8 rights it is evident from the information provided would be affected by a decision to refuse the application"), at least in part because she did not accept the factual matrix that I have set out above; I return to the Article 8 balancing act below.
4. The FtT first made findings of fact relevant to Article 8 ECHR and then addressed first, whether there is family life between the sponsor and C1 and C2 such as engage Article 8(1), and second, whether refusing the application for entry clearance was disproportionate according to Article 8(2). In doing so, it expressly identified the relevant authority as IA & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 1516.
5. The FtT found that the children, the sponsor and Mrs S enjoyed family life together before the sponsor was forced to leave Ethiopia, that family life continued between the children and Mrs S thereafter, and resumed between all four when the sponsor was put back in touch with the others in Uganda. As the children were now adults, it expressly held that the requirement described in IA as “additional elements of dependence” was met, and referenced the confirmation in that authority that family life is not necessarily severed at the point a child turns 18 years old. In doing so it took account of the background facts and the nature of the ongoing contact and support between the sponsor, Mrs S and the children. It characterised the relationship being C1, C2 and the sponsor as that “are, to all intents and purposes, his children”.
6. On proportionality, the FtT referred to its findings on the strength and nature of family life and recorded the difficult circumstances in which the children were living. It acknowledged the relevance of the factors at section 117B of the Nationality, Immigration & Asylum Act 2002. Its ultimate reasoned conclusion was that continued exclusion of the children from the UK was disproportionate and allowed the appeal.
7. The ECO appeals on two grounds:
a. First, the ECO submits that the FtT erred in finding that Article 8 family life existed between the sponsor and C1 and C2. The grounds rely on the length of separation after the sponsor left Ethiopia in 2015, the absence of contact until 2022, the fact that C1 and C2 were adults by the date of hearing and the limited evidence of ongoing contact. The ECO says that the FtT failed properly to apply Kumari v. The Netherlands 44051/20, 10 December 2024 and treated financial support and renewed contact as sufficient, without adequately analysing the nature and quality of the relationship.
b. Second, the ECO submits that, even if family life was engaged, the FtT’s proportionality assessment was legally flawed. The grounds say that the FtT placed impermissible or excessive weight on C1 and C2’s circumstances in Uganda and Ethiopia, treated their own Article 8 rights as directly engaged despite their being outside the United Kingdom, failed to focus on the sponsor’s protected family life, and gave insufficient weight to the public interest in maintaining immigration control, the fact that the Immigration Rules were not met, and the precarious nature of any family life relied on.
8. After permission was granted, a rule 24 Response was provided on behalf of C1 & C2 that can be summarised as follows:
a. First, it is submitted that the grounds of appeal are no more than disagreement with findings that were properly open to the FtT. It relies on the FtT’s detailed findings at paragraphs 10 to 12 on the sponsor’s account of adoption, including its express recognition of the weaknesses in that evidence. It submits that the FtT was entitled to find that C1 and C2 had been treated as the sponsor’s children, that Mrs S had assumed a parental role, and that family life did not cease merely because the sponsor had to flee Ethiopia and contact was later lost.
b. Second, on proportionality, the response submits that the FtT correctly directed itself by reference to IA, took proper account of the family’s history, the sponsor’s accepted refugee status, the children’s lack of independent lives in Uganda, their continued dependence on the sponsor and Mrs S, and the fact that Mrs S had been their de facto mother for many years. It also relies on earlier Home Office family reunion guidance as illustrating the type of exceptional circumstances that may justify leave outside the Rules.
9. The ECO was represented at the hearing by Mr Deller. On the stated weaknesses of the evidence, he accepted that “while [the FtT’s] eyebrows were raised, they then settled back down again”. While unable to make any formal concession, he acknowledged the force of the arguments in the rule 24 Response and made no further submissions.
10. I agree that the ECO’s grounds of appeal disclose no error of law in the FtT’s decision. It was held in IA at [132] that:
132. …Family life requires close personal ties. It is normally limited to core cohabiting family, but can be extended to adult siblings if they can demonstrate additional elements of dependency involving more than the normal emotional ties. The existence of real, committed or effective support is relevant, but not conclusive. The evaluation of whether family life exists is a fact-sensitive exercise where many factors may be relevant including financial support, physical and psychological health and a combination of other factors.
11. This describes the exercise undertaken by the FtT in the present case. Its reasoning as to the nature and quality of family life is plainly rational, grounded in the facts and, while concise, explains to the ECO why Article 8(1) was found to be engaged. The FtT was plainly aware of the requirements before family life will be found between adult relatives by reference to IA. The interruption in contact was plainly taken into account and the FtT was entitled to take into account the nature of the family life that existed beforehand. It simply cannot be suggested that the FtT’s analysis was so reductive as to simply take financial support and renewed contact as sufficient; its analysis was holistic and the situation described as ‘exceptional’. While Kumari was not expressly cited by the FtT, that authority was the subject of extensive discussion in IA and nothing in the FtT’s analysis is inconsistent with it.
12. As to proportionality, insofar as the grounds suggest that no weight can ever be placed on the circumstances of the family member abroad then this is wrong, see IA at [160-[161], [162] and [172]. The FtT’s focus was plainly on the Article 8 rights of the family member in the UK; no material error can arise from this point in any event given the findings on the nature of the relationship and the sponsor’s circumstances as a refugee who had no choice other than to leave his family. Nor, beyond disagreement, is it articulated anywhere in the grounds why insufficient weight was placed on the public interest factors cited. They were each either expressly taken into account by the FtT, for example at [26], or were so obvious on the facts that their consideration can properly be taken as informing the FtT’s analysis without it having to set out each and every step in its reasoning: Senior President’s Practice Direction: Reasons for Decisions at paragraphs 6 and 9.
13. No other discrete complaint is raised in the grounds and the ECO’s appeal is dismissed.
Notice of Decision
(i) The Entry Clearance Officer’s appeal to the Upper Tribunal is dismissed.
(ii) The decision of the First-tier Tribunal to allow the C1 and C2’s appeals stands.

J Neville
Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

10 August 2026