Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-001771
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/01255/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

29th June 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE RAE-REEVES

Between

SB (Bangladesh)
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr A Rana (rep).
For the Respondent: Ms S McKenzie, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer.

Heard at Field House on 19 June 2026

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, SB 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 her. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS

FACTUAL BACKGROUND
The appeal before the First-tier Tribunal
1. The appellant is a citizen of Bangladesh, born on 30 December 2002. She entered the United Kingdom on a visit visa on 30 January 2022 and claimed asylum on 6 June 2022.
2. Her case before the First-tier Tribunal was, in summary, that her former father-in-law was a powerful member of the Awami League; that he had demanded repayment of dowry money and threatened her and her family; and that she was also at risk in Bangladesh because she had a child said to have been born outside marriage.
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal
3. In the First-tier Tribunal decision, promulgated on 12 February 2026, the judge dismissed the appeal on all grounds. The adverse credibility findings are set out principally at paragraphs 23 to 49 of the First-tier Tribunal decision, found at pages 8 to 13 of the error of law bundle.
4. The judge concluded, among other things, that the appellant was not a credible witness, that the account of threats from the former father-in-law was not established, that the claim concerning Mr H (anonymised and referred to below as her ‘partner’) and the asserted illegitimacy of the child was not credible, and that there was no well-founded fear of persecution, no entitlement to humanitarian protection and no Article 8 basis on which the appeal could succeed.
Grounds of appeal
5. Permission to appeal was granted on all grounds by Judge Hollings-Tennant on 02 April 2026.
6. At the error of law hearing, Mr Rana relied on the pleaded grounds subject to one concession. Ground 4 was expressly conceded at the beginning of the hearing and was not pursued. Ms McKenzie relied on the respondent’s rule 24 response dated 27 May 2026 and her oral submissions.
7. The appellant advances the following grounds of appeal;
8. Ground 1 alleges that the judge materially erred in the credibility assessment at paragraph 23 by mischaracterising the evidence concerning the dowry demand. The appellant submits that the judge wrongly treated as inconsistent the appellant’s evidence that the dowry had not been agreed before marriage and her asylum interview evidence that 20 lakh Taka had been demanded when the marriage was arranged. It is said that the judge conflated a demand for dowry with an agreement to pay it, and that this led to an irrational adverse credibility finding on a matter central to the protection claim.
9. Ground 2 contends that at paragraph 24 the judge adopted an unlawful approach to corroboration and failed to consider material evidence. The appellant argues that the judge placed improper weight on the absence of witness statements from her father or other family members without engaging with her evidence that her family had disowned her and blocked communication. It is submitted that the judge thereby imposed, in substance, an impermissible requirement for corroborative evidence and failed to assess whether such supporting material was realistically obtainable.
10. Ground 3 asserts that the judge misread the evidence and failed to distinguish separate events when considering the chronology of threats and family contact at paragraphs 25 and 26. The appellant’s case is that the judge wrongly treated as inconsistent the evidence that the last threat from the former father-in-law was in July 2023 and the later evidence that the appellant contacted her family again after the birth of her child in February 2025. The ground maintains that these were different episodes involving different actors and that the adverse credibility finding therefore rested on a misunderstanding of the factual matrix.
11. Ground 5 challenges paragraph 38 of the decision, where the judge rejected as not credible the appellant’s account that Mr H disappeared approximately six weeks after the birth of their child. It is submitted that the judge’s reasoning was speculative, in particular the observation that someone in a relationship of three years and with a child “would not suddenly disappear without reason”. The appellant further argues that the judge failed to engage with material evidence in her witness statement said to explain the breakdown of the relationship and wrongly drew an adverse inference from the absence of any police report.
12. Ground 6 concerns paragraphs 43 and 44, where the judge relied on information from the General Registrar of Marriages website in concluding that both parents must have been present when the child’s birth was registered. The appellant submits that this material was not in evidence, was not disclosed to the parties, and was not put to her for comment. It is argued that reliance on that website material was procedurally unfair and materially affected the judge’s conclusion as to whether the child had been born outside marriage.
13. Ground 7 alleges a misapplication of the internal relocation test. The appellant submits that the judge erred in concluding that relocation within Bangladesh would be available and reasonable without properly engaging with the country material said to show that single women face social stigma and practical difficulties in accessing accommodation and employment. It is further argued that the judge’s reasoning was infected by the disputed finding that the appellant remained in contact with and could expect support from her family.
DISCUSSION
14. I remind myself at the outset that there must be appropriate judicial restraint in relation to the assessment of an appeal from the specialist First-tier Tribunal. The Upper Tribunal’s task is not to decide whether it would itself have reached the same findings of fact as the First-tier Tribunal. The question is whether the decision involved the making of an error on a point of law.
15. I direct myself that the correct approach to assessing whether or not there is a material error of law in the Judge’s decision was explained by Brooke LJ in R (Iran) and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2005] EWCA Civ 982 and I note the examples he sets out at [9]. Reasons need not be elaborate and need not deal with every argument or item of evidence. The question is whether the losing party can understand why it lost and whether the critical issues have been resolved in substance.
16. A person challenging a decision of a judge of the First-tier Tribunal must have regard to the guidance provided by the Court of Appeal in Volpi v Volpi [2022] EWCA Civ 462 which was recently set out and approved by Lady Justice Falk in Alexander Isaac Hamilton v Mark Colin Barrow (1), Claire Michelle Barrow (2) and Matin Welsh (3) [2024] EWCA Civ 888 and also by Green LJ in Hafiz Aman Ullah v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2024] EWCA Civ 201 [26]. The latter emphasised that;
“the FTT is a specialist fact-finding tribunal. The UT should not rush to find an error of law simply because it might have reached a different conclusion on the facts or expressed themselves differently: see AH (Sudan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2007] UKHL 49 [2008] 1 AC 678 at paragraph [30]”
17. It is helpful to set out the guidance given in Volpi by Lord Justice Lewison;
i. The appeal is therefore an appeal on a pure question of fact. The approach of an appeal court to that kind of appeal is a well-trodden path. It is unnecessary to refer in detail to the many cases that have discussed it; but the following principles are well-settled:
ii. An appeal court should not interfere with the trial judge's conclusions on primary facts unless it is satisfied that he was plainly wrong.
iii. The adverb “plainly” does not refer to the degree of confidence felt by the appeal court that it would not have reached the same conclusion as the trial judge. It does not matter, with whatever degree of certainty, that the appeal court considers that it would have reached a different conclusion. What matters is whether the decision under appeal is one that no reasonable judge could have reached.
iv. An appeal court is bound, unless there is compelling reason to the contrary, to assume that the trial judge has taken the whole of the evidence into his consideration. The mere fact that a judge does not mention a specific piece of evidence does not mean that he overlooked it.
v. The validity of the findings of fact made by a trial judge is not aptly tested by considering whether the judgment presents a balanced account of the evidence. The trial judge must of course consider all the material evidence (although it need not all be discussed in his judgment). The weight which he gives to it is however pre-eminently a matter for him.
vi. An appeal court can therefore set aside a judgment on the basis that the judge failed to give the evidence a balanced consideration only if the judge's conclusion was rationally insupportable.
vii. Reasons for judgment will always be capable of having been better expressed. An appeal court should not subject a judgment to narrow textual analysis. Nor should it be picked over or construed as though it was a piece of legislation or a contract.[2]
18. I now consider each ground in turn, applying the principles set out above.
19. Against that background, most of the grounds advanced in this case are in reality challenges to evaluative findings of fact and weight. Read fairly and as a whole, the First-tier Tribunal decision identifies the material issues and explains why the appellant’s account was rejected. I do not accept that any of the grounds, whether individually or cumulatively, demonstrates a material error of law.
20. Ground 1 is rejected. I do so for the reasons set out in the respondent’s rule 24 response dated 27 May 2026 and for the reasons developed by Ms McKenzie. The judge records that the appellant stated in evidence that the dowry was not agreed before the marriage. She contrasts this with the answer at question 33 of the asylum interview, in which the appellant stated that her in-laws asked for 20 lakh Taka in dowry money and went on to say, “we have to give dowry 20 lakh”. The judge was entitled, having heard the evidence, to conclude that this amounted to an inconsistency. If, as is now submitted, there is a distinction between a demand and an agreement that should have been clarified in re-examination. In the absence of such clarification, the judge was entitled to reach the conclusion that she did. This was an evaluative finding open to her on the material before the Tribunal. Properly analysed through the lens of Volpi, the ground amounts to disagreement with a factual assessment rather than identification of a legal error.
21. Ground 2 is also rejected. I accept Ms McKenzie’s submissions and the reasoning in the rule 24 response. The judge’s reasoning was not confined to the appellant’s father alone. At paragraph 24 the judge referred more broadly to the absence of witness statements from “her father or any other family member or any witnesses”. At paragraph 42 she states, “I find that she is in contact with her family members”. In those circumstances, the judge was entitled to place weight on the absence of supporting evidence.
22. In reaching that conclusion I was taken by Ms McKenzie to TK (Burundi) [2009] EWCA Civ 40, which supports the proposition that where independent supporting evidence is readily available within the jurisdiction, and there is no credible account for its absence, a judge commits no error of law in relying on that fact when rejecting an appellant’s account. That approach supports my conclusion [22].
23. Mr Rana submitted that the judge was not entitled to rely on such absence even in circumstances where she has found there to be contact with the appellant’s family based on MAH (Egypt) v SSHD [2023] EWCA Civ 216. I was not taken to any specific paragraph in that case. I note that the Court of Appeal accepted the submission that there is no legal duty on an appellant to corroborate his claim [87]. However, Lord Justice Singh made clear; “On the other hand, the absence of corroborative evidence can, depending on the circumstances, be of some evidential value: if, for example, it could reasonably have been obtained and there is no good reason for not obtaining it, that may be a matter to which the tribunal can give appropriate weight” [86]. Based on this observation, I find there to be no merit in this submission.
24. Ground 3 is rejected. The judge was entitled to make the finding she did. At paragraph 25 she referred expressly to threats in the plural and noted that, in cross-examination, the appellant said that the last threat was made in July 2023. That was contrasted with the appellant’s evidence that she had been in touch with her family after the child was born in February 2025. Mr Rana submitted that this later evidence concerned a different threat from the appellant’s father. However, the judge was entitled to rely on the inconsistency in the evidence as it was presented before her. This was a classic fact-finding assessment for the trial judge and was not plainly wrong.
25. Ground 4 was conceded by Mr Rana at the commencement of the hearing and was not pursued. Nothing further therefore arises in respect of that ground.
26. Ground 5 is rejected. I have asked myself whether the judge’s reasoning strayed into speculation, in particular in observing that a person in Mr H’s position would not suddenly disappear without reason. The appellant’s own case was that he never wanted the child and Mr Rana suggest that may have been said to provide a reason. However, the question for this Tribunal is not whether different reasoning could have been expressed but whether the judge’s overall conclusion was one that was plainly wrong or perverse. I am not able to reach that conclusion.
27. The judge did not rely only on the comment about disappearance without reason. She also found it not credible that the appellant would know nothing of her partner’s family or immigration status. She noted further that there was no evidence that his disappearance had been reported. Mr Rana referred in submissions to the absence of domestic violence, but in my reading the judge was there referring to the absence of a report of a missing person. At paragraph 40, the judge also relied on inconsistencies concerning whether the relationship involved cohabitation. Taken together, those were matters the judge was entitled to weigh against credibility. This was not a finding outside the range reasonably open to her.
28. Ground 6 is likewise rejected. This ground concerns the judge’s treatment of the registration of the child’s birth, and in particular the assertion that the judge erred by referring to the General Registrar of Marriages website. As stated at paragraph 32 of the respondent’s rule 24 response, the requirement for both parents to be present at the registration of the child’s birth was put to the appellant in oral cross-examination which Mr Rana accepted at the hearing. That is also reflected in the first line of paragraph 43, where the judge records that the appellant gave evidence that she registered the child’s birth alone. The issue of the partner’s involvement in the registration was therefore clearly live and was put to the appellant and her answer was not accepted.
29. The failure to identify the specific website and to refer to it after the hearing does not, in the circumstances of this case, amount to a material error of law where the underlying point had already been raised in cross-examination and the appellant had a fair opportunity to deal with the substance of it (and her explanation was rejected). In the Grounds, Mr Rana cites Al Rawi and others (Respondents) v The Security Service and others [2011] UKSC 34, a case dealing with closed material procedure in cases involving the Security Services. Without being taken to a relevant paragraph, I do not find it helpful and instead follow the guidance in Tui v Griffiths [2023] UKSC 48 at [70].
30. Finally, I reject Ground 7 for the reasons given in the respondent’s rule 24 response. The complaint regarding internal relocation does not disclose a material error of law. Read as a whole, the judge’s conclusion on return and relocation was one properly open to her once the credibility findings had been made and she expressly refers to the appropriate CPIN. This ground again amounts to disagreement with findings of fact and evaluative judgment.
31. Standing back and applying both Volpi and R (Iran), I am satisfied that the First-tier Tribunal’s decision was one that it was open to the judge to reach, and that the reasons are adequate when read fairly and holistically. The grounds do not disclose any material error of law.
Notice of Decision
32. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve the making of a material error of law.
33. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal shall stand.
34. The appellant’s appeal to the Upper Tribunal is dismissed.

Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge Rae-Reeves
Immigration and Asylum Chamber
22 June 2026