Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-001527
First-tier Tribunal No:
PA/59815/2024
THE IMMIGRATION ACTS
Decision & Reasons Issued:
6th August 2026

Before
UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE NORTON-TAYLOR

Between

GP
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the appellant: Mr L Youssefian, Counsel, instructed by ITN Solicitors
For the respondent: Ms J Isherwood, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 27 July 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
1. The appellant, a citizen of Honduras, appeals against the decision of the First-tier Tribunal, promulgated on 11 December 2025. By that decision, the First-tier Tribunal Judge (“the judge”) dismissed the appellant’s appeal against the respondent’s refusal of his protection and human rights claims.

2. In summary, the appellant claimed to be at risk from a specific gang operating in Honduras, Mara-18 (“the gang”), as result of three particular matters said to have taken place in 2022. The first was the requirement imposed by the gang for the appellant to pay what was described as a “war tax”, i.e. extortion. The second was an armed attack on a lorry driven by the appellant in August or September 2022, as a result of which the appellant knocked down the nephew of a gang member. This was said to have led to a direct demand made by the gang against the appellant himself; to pay 1.5 million lempiras as a form of compensation. The third and final matter was said to be a targeting of the appellant’s home by the gang at a time when he was no longer residing there out of fear.

The judge’s decision
3. The judge’s decision is detailed and I mean no disrespect by only providing a brief summary here. The parties will of course be well-aware of the full contents of the 18-page decision. It is right to say that it was discussed in significant detail at the error of law hearing before me.

4. The judge set out in some detail the oral evidence given at the hearing: [10]-[24].

5. The judge accepted that the appellant potentially fell within a particular social group: [32].

6. The assessment of the evidence for the purposes of determining the credibility of the appellant’s account begins at [33] and runs through to [55], at which point she rejected all material aspects thereof. Examples of the most significant adverse findings include:
(a) An inconsistency in the evidence as to what happened and when: in the screening interview there was no mention of incidents taking place in September and October 2022. Nor did that interview mention demands for money;

(b) The claimed demand by the gang for the appellant to pay 1.5 million lempiras did not fit consistently within the rest of the appellant’s evidence;

(c) It was implausible that the appellant had returned to his home area after the claimed threats to his safety;

(d) Police reports relied on by the appellant contained inconsistencies with his own evidence;

(e) There were problems in respect of what precisely the appellant had been carrying in his lorry over the course of time;

(f) There was an inconsistency as whether and/or how many times the family home had been shot at.

7. Accordingly, the appeal was dismissed on all grounds.

The grounds of appeal
8. The grounds are narrowly drawn. Ground 1 has three specific elements to it:
(a) The judge erred at [41] by misunderstanding/overlooking/confusing the appellant’s evidence in respect of the demand for 1.5 million lempiras (and the consequent threats to his safety) made by the gang;

(b) The judge erred in finding the to be an inconsistency in respect of the extortion demands/threats (i.e. the “war tax”) on the one hand, and the demand for 1.5 million lempiras on the other;

(c) The judge was wrong to have found that the appellant had made no mention of shots being fired at his home, as he had set this out in his witness statement.

9. Ground 2 takes issue with the judge’s reliance on what was and was not said in the appellant’s screening interview. In effect, it is contended that the judge placed too much weight on that source of evidence.

10. Permission to appeal was granted on both grounds by the Upper Tribunal.

Rule 24
11. The respondent provided a rule 24 response. As regards ground 1, it is submitted that the judge had had regard to all relevant evidence and had arrived at sustainable findings. As regards ground 2, it is submitted that the attribution of weight was a matter for the judge.

The hearing
12. Mr Youssefian relied on the grounds and focused in particular on [41] of the judge’s decision. He submitted that however one read the passage in question, it was sufficiently clear that the judge had either overlooked the appellant’s evidence as to when the demand for 1.5 million lempiras had been made, or had confused the war tax with the demand for 1.5 million. He submitted that the judge herself had regarded this particular issue as being one of two “core features” of the evidence and when this was combined with references contained in [46], the judge’s error was material, notwithstanding other adverse findings which had not specifically been challenged in the grounds.

13. Ms Isherwood relied on the rule 24 response and essentially submitted that when the judge’s decision was viewed holistically it was clear enough that she had taken all the evidence into account when making her findings and that there were no errors of law at all. If there was any error in respect of [41], it was not material.

14. Having heard a brief reply from Mr Youssefian, I reserved my decision.

Conclusions
15. As in all cases, appropriate judicial caution must be exercised before interfering with a decision of the First-tier Tribunal. I need not set out the various authorities which make this clear, but I have had them in mind when reaching my conclusions.

16. I fully acknowledge the detailed nature of the judge’s decision in this case, together with the fact that she rejected all aspects of the appellant’s account. I also acknowledge the fact that the appellant’s challenge focuses on a particular passage in the decision ([41]) and that there is a danger of undertaking an unduly forensic analysis and losing sight of the need to consider the decision sensibly and holistically. I have sought to guard against that danger.

17. It is also important to recognise the fact that not all errors will be material to the outcome of a judge’s decision. The test for materiality has been expressed in different ways, but the central proposition by which I have directed myself is to ask whether any error(s) “might” have affected the outcome, or, put in another way, whether the any rational judge must have come to the same overall conclusion notwithstanding any error(s). In the present case, I acknowledge that there are a number of adverse findings which have not been specifically challenged in the grounds and there were certainly evidential problems with the appellant’s account.

18. Taking full account of the above, I conclude that the judge materially erred in law. My reasons for this are as follows.

19. I first set out [41] of the judge’s decision:

“[The appellant] confirmed there were no other incidents [other than those occurring in August and September 2022]. I clarified if anything else happened between those dates and he confirmed nothing had happened despite the later police reports suggesting many threatening phone calls. The first problem apparent from the oral evidence he gave is he referenced the gang requiring him to pay the 1.5 million after the September incident. On his oral description of the second incident there was no opportunity to discuss the war tax and so this could only have been discussed before the September incident. The problem with this is in the screening interview there was no mention of any discussion with any gang members about a tax in August. Furthermore, in his oral evidence he places the knocking down of a gang member on the 19 September 2022 incident but in his screening interview it occurred in the August 2022 incident. These are two core features central to his account which appear inconsistent and which I would expect a level of consistency when there were only three events in total. A further problem is in the hearing he made no mention of three incidents and only referred to 2 incidents. He made no mention of this house being shot at before he left.”

20. To put [41] in context, it is clear from the appellant’s evidence as a whole that he had consistently stated that a demand for 1.5 million lempiras had been made as a direct result of him knocking over the nephew of a gang member.

21. I read this paragraph numerous times in advance of the hearing. It was the subject of detailed discussion at the hearing. I have re-read it before preparing my decision. To my mind, however one reads the passage constituting the first five sentences, there are only three reasonable conclusions to be drawn: (a) the judge overlooked entirely the evidence that the 1.5 million lempiras was demanded after and as a result of the incident involving the nephew; (b) the judge misapprehended the evidence by conflating the war tax with the demand for 1.5 million lempiras; or (c) the judge was cognisant of the difference between the two, but failed to make any finding about whether a demand for 1.5 million had ever been made. Given the various references to the appellant having stated that the demand for 1.5 million lempiras was made after the incident involving the nephew, it my view (b) is the very likely to be correct. On the appellant’s consistent evidence, the demand for 1.5 million lempiras only arose because of the incident involving the nephew and was distinct from the war tax issue. If I were wrong in my primary conclusion, (c) would apply.

22. Of course, there was the underlying difficulty with the appellant’s screening interview in which he appeared to place the incident involving the nephew in August 2022 and not September of that year. That inconsistency was a matter which the judge was entitled to take into account when assessing this part of the appellant’s evidence and indeed his account as a whole.

23. However, the judge expressly stated that the war tax/demand for 1.5 union lempiras point was one of two “core features central to [the appellant’s] account”. She was not only entitled to describe it as such, but was correct to have done so. The incident involving the nephew and the consequent demand formed a, if not the, specific basis on which the appellant was said to have been targeted by the gang thereafter and the reason why he would be at risk on return. That status suggests that the error I have identified was material. There is a further consideration which reinforces my view that the error was material. At [46], the judge says this:

“In the interview the Respondent identified the inconsistency between the screening interview and the account being given by the Appellant in the interview. He told the officer that on the 28 August the gang had started to threaten him with a war tax. The problem with this evidence is that he had claimed the war tax demand had been made after the incident on the 19 September and was in direct response to the knocking over of the nephew and when the fact his account was not consistent was put to him, he claimed the war tax was demanded on the 28 August 2022.”

24. As discussed earlier, the war tax was (on the appellant’s consistent evidence and notwithstanding the chronological difficulty highlighted by the judge) distinct from the demand for 1.5 million lempiras. What is said at [46] strongly suggests that the judge’s conflation at [41] of the war tax with the later demand for 1.5 million lempiras has been carried over into an additional adverse credibility finding.

25. In my judgment, the error I have previously identified might have made a difference to the overall assessment of credibility, despite the other problems in the appellant’s evidence. It cannot properly be said that the outcome of the appellant’s appeal would have inevitably been adverse to him.

26. There is a further error made by the judge which, whilst in isolation would not be material, is so when considered cumulatively with what I have already said. Returning to [41], the judge appears to have held it against the appellant that in oral evidence he failed to mention his house having been shot at. It is unclear from the face of the decision whether he had actually been asked about that. In any event, he had referred to this incident in writing previously. There is no engagement with that evidence. It cannot be said that this evidence was peripheral because, on the appellant’s account, it was directly linked to the demand for 1.5 million lempiras.

27. I can deal with ground 2 briefly. There is a concern that the judge placed too much weight on the screening interview when assessing the evidence as a whole. However, the attribution of weight is primarily a matter for the first-instance judge and I would not classify her approach is being irrational or otherwise unlawful in this regard.

28. It follows from the above that the judge’s decision should be set aside.

Disposal
29. The parties were in agreement that if I were to conclude that the judge had materially erred in respect of the credibility findings, the appeal should be remitted to the First-tier Tribunal for a complete re-hearing. As to the judge’s conclusion on the legal question as to whether there was a Convention reason, Ms Isherwood accepted that this was sustainable. I see no reason to disturb that particular conclusion and it is preserved.

30. I also note that the respondent has accepted throughout that if the appellant’s account is credible, there would not be a sufficiency of protection from the Honduran authorities. Subject to fair notice to the appellant in advance of the re-hearing, that position should pertain to the remitted appeal.

31. Therefore, the remitted hearing will need to once again address the appellant’s evidence and then to determine whether he is at risk from the gang and, if he is, whether he could safely and reasonably relocate within Honduras.

Anonymity
32. It is appropriate to maintain the anonymity direction previously made. The appellant’s case is ongoing and remains focused on a claim for international protection.

Observation
33. There is one matter which requires comment. It appears as though the appellant’s representatives failed to serve an error of law bundle on the respondent by email, as required. Those practising in this jurisdiction must be aware that service on the respondent can only be by way of email. Whilst in an ideal world the CE-File platform would be able to accommodate service as well as filing with the Tribunal, practitioners must work with what is in place. If the representatives continue to commit such an omission, further action may be taken.

Notice of Decision
The making of the decision of the First-tier Tribunal did involve the making of an error on a point of law.
I exercise my discretion under section 12(2)(a) of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 and set aside the decision of the First-tier Tribunal.
I remit the case to the First-tier Tribunal.

Directions to the First-tier Tribunal
1. This appeal is remitted to the First-tier Tribunal (the Bradford or Manchester hearing centres) for a re-hearing, subject to what I’ve said in this error of law decision;

2. The remitted hearing shall not be conducted by First-tier Tribunal Judge Mensah;

3. The First-tier Tribunal will issue any appropriate case management directions in due course.

H Norton-Taylor
Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber
Dated: 28 July 2026