Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-001707
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/59536/2024
LP/07437/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 2nd of October 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE O’BRIEN

Between

MA
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr M West of Counsel, instructed by Barclay Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr A Sheikh, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 31 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

1. The appellant appeals against a decision of the First-tier Tribunal (FtT) dated 15 January 2026 dismissing his appeal against the respondent’s decision dated 25 March 2024 to refuse his protection claim made on 14 September 2022.

2. Permission to appeal was granted by Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge Haria in a decision dated 14 May 2026. The grounds did not challenge the FtT’s decision to dismiss the appeal on asylum grounds and humanitarian protection grounds. Instead, the sole ground of appeal was that the FtT had acted procedurally unfairly by determining and dismissing the appellant’s appeal on human rights grounds.

3. The respondent did not submit any response under rule 24 of the Upper Tribunal Procedure Rules 2008. However, she does oppose the appeal on the basis that the FtT’s decision discloses no, or no material, error of law.

4. The representatives each made oral submissions, in Mr West’s case supplementing his grounds of appeal. Whilst I refer below only to such matters as necessary to understand my decision, I took the written and oral submissions, and the materials to which they referred, into account in their entirety.

The Parties’ Respective Cases

5. It is Mr West’s case in a nutshell that, it having been agreed at the outset of the hearing that there was no Article 8 or separate Article 3 medical claim, no human rights appeal was being advanced, and so the FtT acted procedurally unfairly in dismissing the appeal on human rights grounds. According to Mr West, in doing so, the FtT prejudiced the appellant’s future position. The fact that the appellant was not advancing human rights grounds at the hearing did not mean that he did not believe that his removal would be unlawful under s6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 but rather that he had not been able yet to marshal the necessary evidence and so was not yet ready to argue the point. Mr West did not accept that this stance would be an abuse of process, but submitted instead that it was a position the appellant was entitled to take. Mr West did not accept that the pleaded error, if made out, was immaterial given that the appeal had also been dismissed on all of the grounds advanced before the FtT; fairness was fundamental. He submitted that the appropriate disposal would be to set aside the FtT’s decision insofar as it dismissed the appeal on human rights grounds and remit for rehearing of the appeal on those grounds.

6. Mr Sheikh submitted that the appellant had withdrawn his human rights claim and so it was no error (or alternatively no material error) for the FtT to dismiss the appeal on human rights grounds. The error was further rendered immaterial by the fact that the appeal had been dismissed without challenge on the grounds advanced. It was an abuse to ask for the FtT decision to be set aside so that it could now consider a case expressly not advanced at the hearing.

Consideration

7. The challenged decision relates to an claim made by the appellant on 14 September 2022. His claim in short was that he would be at risk on return on the basis of his political opinion and activities. The claim was refused on 25 March 2024. Within the refusal, the respondent considered also whether the appellant’s removal would breach Article 8 ECHR and decided that it would not.

8. The appellant appealed to the FtT on 4 April 2024 on all three available statutory grounds: that removing him from the United Kingdom would breach the United Kingdom’s obligation under the Refugee Convention; that removing him from the United Kingdom would breach the United Kingdom’s obligation in relation to persons eligible for a grant of humanitarian protection; and that removing him from the United Kingdom would be unlawful under section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA).

9. As is the case with reform cases before the FtT, the factual basis of those grounds was not advanced at the outset but instead upon submission of the appeal skeleton argument (ASA), after provision of the respondent’s bundle. In addition to giving details of the appellant’s protection grounds, his ASA dated 9 December 2024 further asserted that his removal would be contrary to paragraph 276ADE(1)(vi) (the relevant provision in the Immigration Rules relating to private life under Article 8 ECHR) on the basis that he faced very significant obstacles to reintegration, and that the appeal should be allowed in any event under Article 8 outside the Immigration Rules.

10. Consequently, the appellant addressed the claimed interference in his Article 8 rights in his witness statement, in particular in paragraphs 15 to 18, not just arising from his protection claim but also in general. However, the appellant confirmed at the hearing before the FtT that the case before him was a protection appeal only and that there was no separate Article 8 claim (as well as no separate Article 3 medical claim).

11. The FtT is criticised not only for dismissing the appeal on human rights grounds but also for making the following ‘findings’ at [23]:

‘For completeness I would add that I would not have found a claim based on Article 8 private life, proved. Given the Appellant’s age and education, the presence of close family in Bangladesh and the findings of fact set out above there are in my assessment no very significant obstacles to his reintegration in Bangladesh and the Refusal does not have unjustifiably harsh consequences.’

12. It is said that the FtT thereby failed to take the issues-based approach confirmed in Lata (FtT: principal controversial issues) [2023] UKUT 163 (IAC), where it was said at [31] that, ‘The task of the judge is to deal with the issues that the parties have identified.’ However, it must also be remembered that the FtT’s principal statutory task on an appeal under s82 of the Nationality. Immigration and Asylum Ac 2002 is prescribed in s82(2) as:

(2) The Tribunal must determine—
(a) any matter raised as a ground of appeal, and
(b) any matter which section 85 requires it to consider.

13. The definition of ‘matter’ was considered in Mahmud (S. 85 NIAA 2002 – ‘new matters’) [2017] UKUT 00488 (IAC) at [29]:

‘A matter is the factual substance of a claim. A ground of appeal is the legal basis on which the facts in any given matter could form the basis of a challenge to the decision under appeal. For example, medical evidence of a serious health condition could be a matter which constitutes a ground of appeal on human rights grounds based on Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights which if breached, would mean that removal would be contrary to section 6 of the Human Rights Act, a ground of appeal in section 84(2) of the 2002 Act. Similarly, evidence of a relationship with a partner in the United Kingdom could be a matter which constitutes a ground of appeal based on Article 8 and for the same reasons could fall within section 84(2) of the 2002 Act as if made out, removal would be contrary to section 6 of the Human Rights Act.’

14. The matters raised by the appellant as grounds of appeal, in addition to his protection claim, were the facts said to constitute satisfaction of the Immigration Rules relevant to Article 8 private life claims, and the facts said to render his deportation disproportionate nevertheless under Article 8. These were both matters which the FtT was obliged to determine. As for the appellant’s protection claim, those facts were said to establish a breach of the Refugee Convention should he be returned to Bangladesh, in the alternative a breach of the United Kingdom’s obligations to individuals entitled to humanitarian protection if returned and (necessarily) a breach in that eventuality of his rights under Article 3 ECHR, rendering removal unlawful under s6 HRA.

15. Consequently, the FtT was obliged to determine each of those matters. In fairness, the appellant expressly indicated that he no longer wished to argue that removal would breach Article 8 or Article 3 on medical grounds. However, it was not said on his behalf that his return would otherwise expose him to Article 3 mistreatment. Indeed, it was clearly still being argued that it would. Consequently, the FtT needed at the very least to decide whether to allow or dismiss the appeal on Refugee Convention grounds, humanitarian protection grounds and/or human rights grounds with respect to Article 3. The FtT cannot therefore be criticised for dismissing the appeal on all three grounds, and no error of law arises form its doing so.

16. Furthermore, I do not accept that the FtT’s dismissal on the appeal on human rights grounds signified that it had considered and made adverse findings on those matters identified in the ASA and witness statement as Article 8 grounds. Indeed, the challenged ‘findings’ at [23] are expressly not findings at all. Therefore, the suggestion that an FtT considering an appeal against refusal of a future human rights claim by the appellant would use that paragraph as a starting point under the principles set out in Devaseelan v SSHD [2002] UKAIT 000702, [2003] Imm AR 1 is fanciful. Additionally, it is clear that the FtT’s observations (more properly described) were made without proper examination of the evidence and certainly without any argument on the issues, as would be clear to any future judge.

17. It is almost certainly the case that the FtT’s dismissal of the appeal also involved formal dismissal of pleaded Article 8 grounds, the FtT being obliged under statute so to do. However, it is clear from the decision that the reason for their dismissal was the appellant’s abandonment of those grounds. Again, this approach discloses no error of law.

18. Even if the FtT erred in dismissing the appeal on human rights grounds without expressly limiting that dismissal to the protection-based Article 3 ground, the error was plainly immaterial. The Article 8 grounds were not being pursued and so would not have led to the appeal being allowed. In short, the appeal would have been dismissed even if the FtT had limited strictly its consideration and comments to the protection-based grounds.

19. On reflection, I do not consider that the appellant’s approach to the appeal before the FtT was an abuse of process. An appellant does not (unlike in some other jurisdictions) have to bring all of his immigration and asylum claims at once. Indeed, the mechanism used by the respondent to encourage such an approach – the s120 ‘one stop notice’ – appears very much to have fallen out of fashion. However, I do consider the disposal urged on me by Mr West (were I to have found in his favour) would be such an abuse.

20. The appellant expressly abandoned his previously pleaded (and evidenced) Article 8 grounds. It is simply not an appropriate disposal to set aside the dismissal on human rights grounds, after the appellant had expressly disavowed his Article 8 grounds, in order to allow him now to argue those grounds before the FtT. The fact that an appropriate disposal has not been identified perhaps fortifies my conclusion that the decision involved no error of law.

21. As it is, I have found that the FtT’s decision was not erroneous, and so the question of disposal does not arise.

Notice of Decision

1. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve the making of an error on a point of law and stands undisturbed.

Sean O’Brien

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

29 September 2026