Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-003305
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/59938/2024
LP/01164/2025

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

4th September 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BULPITT

Between

FL
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT

Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr A Malik, Counsel instructed by A&P Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr K Ojo, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 24 August 2026

Order Regarding Anonymity

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

DECISION AND REASONS

1. The appellant is a 35 year old citizen of Sri Lanka, who appeals with permission against the decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Keshvala (the Judge) to dismiss her appeal against the respondent’s refusal of her protection and human rights claims to remain in the United Kingdom. Pursuant to section 12(1) of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007, the issue for me is whether the Judge’s decision involved the making of an error on a point of law.

Background

2. The appellant entered the United Kingdom with her nine-year-old daughter in August 2022 having been granted a visit visa. In October 2022 she claimed asylum saying in a screening interview conducted the following month, that she feared persecution by the authorities in Sri Lanka because she has been accused of something she hasn’t done and the CID are looking for her. The appellant was not substantively interviewed about that claim until January 2024 and February 2024.

3. In her interviews the appellant said that in February 2019 she gave 750,000 rupees in cash to a man called “Manjula” as an investment. Manjula owns a grocery store and has an uncle in the Sri Lanka Freedom party. Manjula paid her dividends from that investment for two months but then stopped and refused to return the money, assaulting the appellant and her daughter when she asked for the money back. Deciding that she could not deal with Manjula the appellant did nothing about the money she was owed, and she has not spoken to Manjula since July 2019. In June 2022 the appellant discovered that Manjula had been arrested and accused of giving funds to those responsible for the bombings which occurred in Sri Lanka at Easter in 2019. She learnt that when questioned, Manjula told his accusers that the money had come from the appellant and that she had asked him to pass it on to the bombers. As a result the appellant said that since June 2022 the Sri Lankan authorities have been seeking to arrest her. The appellant described being told by neighbours that the police had been to her house looking for her twice in June 2022 and so she made obtained a visit visa to come to the United Kingdom and fled Sri Lanka in August 2022. The appellant said she had not spoken to her husband for a number of months, that they were separated and that she was had begun a relationship with a man from Afghanistan who was also seeking asylum.

4. The respondent refused the applicant’s protection claim in a decision dated 25 March 2024. In that decision she accepted that the appellant is Sri Lankan but did not accept any of the facts of her claim were true. The respondent described the appellant’s account as inconsistent, lacking in detail, implausible and inconsistent with external information. The respondent found that the appellant’s credibility was further undermined by her failure to reveal her intention to claim asylum upon her arrival in the United Kingdom. The respondent concluded that the appellant’s removal would not amount to a disproportionate interference with the private and family life she had established in the United Kingdom.

5. The appellant appealed against the respondent’s decision to the First-tier Tribunal. In anticipation of the hearing of her appeal she served two bundles of evidence and an appeal skeleton argument (ASA). Within those bundles the appellant provided two witness statements in which she included further details of her claim. The appellant said that whilst she lived in the same house as her husband until she left Sri Lanka, the relationship was difficult and she and her daughter lived separately in one room. She said she had no close family left in Sri Lanka. The appellant said that between finding out that the police had been to her house in June 2022 and her departure from Sri Lanka in August 2022 she was in hiding and that her husband had arranged her visit visa. The appellant claimed that after she left Sri Lanka the Sri Lankan authorities had visited her home and interrogated her husband and his family about her. She explained that while in the United Kingdom she had begun a relationship with an Afghan man, MS who has been granted asylum in the United Kingdom and who lives with his son. The appellant said the couple have undertaken an Islamic marriage and, while they do not live together, they consider themselves a family. The day before the hearing of the appeal the appellant served a “Promissory Note” which she said reflected her loan to Manjula.

6. The appeal hearing took place before the Judge on 31 March 2026. The appellant and MS gave oral evidence and the advocates made submissions. At the end of the hearing the Judge reserved his decision.

The Judge’s Decision

7. The Judge identified the disputed issues in the appeal as being (i) whether the appellant’s account of her history in Sri Lanka was true and (ii) whether her removal would lead to unjustifiably harsh consequences or was a disproportionate interference with the appellant’s article 8 Convention rights. Having set out the evidence, the parties submissions and the legal framework the Judge turned to his “findings” at [22] of the decision stating:

I have assessed the appellant’s account in relation to the events which took place around Manjula and her subsequent escape from Sri Lanka to the UK with her daughter. I find that the appellant’s account contains inconsistencies with respect to key aspects of her claims. The cumulative effect of this is to undermine the credibility of her account and the veracity of her claim to an extent whereby I find to the requisite standard that the appellant does not fear persecution by the Sri Lankan authorities because I do not find that the was appellant became financially entangled with Manjula, that Manjula was arrested by the police in relation to the bombings in 2019 and that this led to the Sri Lankan police actively looking for the appellant.

8. The Judge explained that adverse conclusion about the credibility of the appellant’s account in ten sub-paragraphs (i) – (x) before he returned to his conclusion at [23] and confirmed that having considered the case in the round, he found that the appellant had not proved to the relevant standard that she fears persecution by the Sri Lankan authorities, that she had not been framed by Manjula and she “has not drawn adverse attention from the Sri Lankan authorities”.

9. The Judge considered the appellant’s human rights claim from [25] of the decision onwards. The Judge found at [26] that although they did not live together the appellant and MS shared a family life and that the respondent’s decision interfered with that family life as well as with the private life that the appellant and her daughter will have established during their time in the United Kingdom. The Judge adopted a “balance sheet approach” identifying the factors in favour of the public interest in effective immigration control at [28] and those factors in favour of the private and family life of the appellant and her daughter at [29]. Having reminded himself of the Supreme Court’s guidance in R (Agyarko) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] UKSC 11 the Judge weighed those competing factors against each other at [31] and concluded that the public interest in immigration control outweighed the appellant’s private and family life interests.

10. Accordingly, the Judge dismissed the appellant’s protection and human rights appeals.

The Appeal to this Tribunal

11. The appellant was granted permission to appeal to this Tribunal on five grounds by a second Judge of the First-tier Tribunal (the permission Judge) who did not identify why she considered the grounds to be arguable, but did not limit the grant of permission.

12. The first four grounds all relate to the Judge’s finding that the appellant’s account of events in Sri Lanka was not credible. Ground one avers that the Judge failed to assess the credibility of the appellant’s account with reference to the situation in Sri Lanka and instead assessed plausibility with reference to what would be expected in the United Kingdom. Ground two avers that the Judge made mistakes of fact when assessing the credibility of the appellant’s account. Ground three avers that the Judge failed to consider the appellant's second witness statement when finding that she had given inconsistent accounts about her intention when coming to the United Kingdom. Ground four avers that it was procedurally unfair for the Judge to attach little weight to the Promissory Note adduced by the appellant because it was inconsistent with her oral evidence, without first giving the appellant an opportunity to explain the inconsistency.

13. The fifth ground of appeal avers that the Judge erred when assessing whether the appellant’s removal would amount to a disproportionate interference with her article 8 Convention rights. In particular it is submitted that the Judge failed to assess the situation on the date of the hearing, speculated about MS’s ability to life with the appellant in Sri Lanka with his son, failed to consider the length of any separation of the appellant from MS and failed to consider the effect on MS’s son that separation from the appellant and her daughter will have.

14. The respondent served a written response to the grounds of appeal in accordance with rule 24 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, in which she argued that the first four grounds sought to repackage disagreements with the Judge’s decision as errors of law. The respondent also argued that the Judge’s assessment of the proportionality of interference with appellant’s Article 8 rights was fair and that the Judge reached a conclusion that was reasonably open to him on the evidence.

15. At the hearing of the appeal Mr Malik and Mr Ojo made useful submissions consistent with the written arguments that had been advanced. I mean no disrespect by not setting those submissions out in detail but will refer to them where necessary to explain my decision.

Analysis

16. Appellate courts have been frequently reminded of the need to exercise judicial caution before interfering with findings of fact made by first instance Judges. At [29] of Lowe v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 62 McCombe LJ explained, referring to an earlier judgment of Lewison LJ in Fage United Kingdom Ltd v Chabani United Kingdom Ltd why this is so:

The reasons for this approach are many. They include:

i. The expertise of a trial judge is in determining what facts are relevant to the legal issues to be decided, and what those facts are if they are disputed.
ii. The trial is not a dress rehearsal. It is the first and last night of the show.
iii. Duplication of the trial judge's role on appeal is a disproportionate use of the limited resources of an appellate court, and will seldom lead to a different outcome in an individual case.
iv. In making his decisions the trial judge will have regard to the whole sea of evidence presented to him, whereas an appellate court will only be island hopping.
v. The atmosphere of the courtroom cannot, in any event, be recreated by reference to documents (including transcripts of evidence).
vi. Thus even if it were possible to duplicate the role of the trial judge, it cannot in practise be done.

115. It is also important to have in mind the role of a judgement given after trial. The primary function of a first instance judge is to find facts and identify the legal points and to advance reasons for deciding them in a particular way. He should give his reasons in sufficient detail to show the parties, and if need be, the Court of Appeal, the principles on which he has acted and the reasons that have led him to his decision. They need not be elaborate. There is no duty on a judge, in giving his reasons to deal with every argument presented by counsel in support of his case. His function is to reach conclusions and give reasons to support his view, not to spell out every matter as if summing up to a jury. Nor need he deal at any length with matters that are not disputed. It is sufficient if what he says shows the basis on which he has acted. These are not controversial observations.

17. The first four grounds of appeal which complain about the Judge’s assessment of the credibility of the appellant’s account are in reality in my judgment disagreements with the holistic assessment undertaken by the Judge which attempt to “island hop” different parts of the Judge’s explanation for his conclusion, when the Judge assessed the whole sea of evidence. I am not satisfied that these grounds of appeal identify an error of law individually or cumulatively. Instead, I am satisfied that the Judge has given adequate reasons to explain the impression the evidence made on him and his overall conclusion that the appellant was not telling the truth when making her protection claim. I explain this overall conclusion, by dealing with the complaints made in the four grounds of appeal in the following paragraphs.

Ground one
18. The complaint in ground one is that the Judge did not assess the credibility of the appellant’s claim by reference to the prevailing situation in Sri Lanka but instead assessed plausibility by reference to what would be expected in the United Kingdom. This complaint reflects the guidance provided in HK v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2006] EWCA Civ 1037 that:

“The ingredients of the story, and the story as a whole have to be considered against the available country evidence and reliable expert evidence, and other familiar factors, sauch as consistency with what the appellant has said before, and with other factual evidence (where there is any).”

19. I am satisfied however that the Judge’s decision followed that guidance and that the Judge did not apply expectations of behaviour in the United Kingdom when assessing the appellant’s case or ignore the prevailing situation in Sri Lanka. One of the features of the appellant’s case was the paucity of evidence about the prevailing situation in Sri Lanka. The appellant did not adduce any expert or other evidence of the situation in Sri Lanka.

20. Specific complaint is made that at [20(i)] the Judge drew adverse inferences from the appellant’s failure to provide the full name of the trusted friend who introduced her Manjula without taking account of the appellant’s answer in interview that “we don’t do surnames, we use the first name only”. There are several problems with this submission. First, it is not evident that the Judge drew any adverse inference from the appellant’s failure to provide the surname of the friend. Whilst the Judge refers to the appellant’s inability to provide the full name of the friend he does not in his analysis draw any ostensible inference from that fact.

21. Secondly the appellant’s evidence was not that surnames are not used in Sri Lanka. The appellant’s answer was that “we use the first name only” providing no clarity about who she was referring to when she said “we”. Neither was any other evidence adduced to the effect that people in Sri Lanka do not use surnames. It would have been surprising if there were such evidence given the mother of the appellant’s friend has provided a witness statement in which she uses both her first name and surname. There was simply no evidence before the Judge that the “situation prevailing in Sri Lanka” is that people don’t do surnames and use first names only.

22. The judge was required to assess the likelihood of the appellant’s account being true. When doing so he was entitled to consider the level of detail provided by the appellant. The Judge was not bound to accept the appellant’s account that “we use the first name only” when considering the appellant’s inability to provide the full name of her trusted friend. Whilst it is not clear from his decision that the Judge did in fact draw an adverse inference from the absence of that detail, doing so would not have indicated that the Judge was applying expectations of behaviour in the United Kingdom and ignoring the prevailing situation in Sri Lanka where there was simply no evidence that surnames are not used in Sri Lanka, in fact the evidence pointed the other way.

23. I am likewise not persuaded that the Judge was applying United Kingdom conditions and expectations of behaviour on the appellant when commenting on the absence an arrest warrant or the appellant’s claim that she fled Sri Lanka without speaking to the police and claiming her innocence. These discrete parts of the Judge’s analysis of the appellant’s account should not be isolated from his holistic assessment of her account. When that assessment is considered holistically it is in my judgment plain that the Judge has carefully assessed and evaluated the appellant’s account in the context of all the evidence that was adduced and that his conclusion about the truthfulness of the account was reached only after that holistic assessment.

Ground two
24. The submission in ground two is that the Judge made mistakes of fact in his assessment of the appellant’s evidence. Rather than identifying mistakes of fact however, it is clear in my judgment that this ground is a disagreement with the Judge’s assessment of the evidence and a suggestion that alternative conclusions could have been drawn by the Judge.

25. The first complaint in this ground relates to [20(v)] of the Judge’s decision in which he said the following:

The appellant stated the police were looking for her and attended her home twice in two weeks in June 2024. She has also produced a letter purporting to be from Nisnala’s mother, Mrs Jayasedi, in which the author stated the police were still actively looking for the appellant and were threatening her (Mrs Jayasedi mother) to the extent that she would have to move home. The appellant also stated a neighbour had told her that her husband in Sri Lanka and his family had been interrogated about her involvement in the 2019 attack. Despite this intense search for the appellant, which has spanned years, the appellant was able to freely travel out of Sri Lanka. This suggests that there was not a warrant for the arrest of the appellant. He appellant in oral evidence accepted she did not know whether a warrant had been issued for her arrest. The absence of a warrant when the police were intently searching for the Appellant damages her credibility.

26. Mr Malik’s submission was that the Judge undertook this analysis on the mistaken understanding that the appellant’s claim was that the intense search for her took place before she left Sri Lanka. A fair reading of the paragraph makes clear that this was not the Judge’s understanding, as he refers to the evidence of Mrs Jayasedi and neighbours of searches after the appellant left Sri Lanka. The Judge does erroneously refer to two searches of the appellant’s home in two weeks in June 2024, however on a fair reading of the paragraph it is plain that this is a slip of the pen and the Judge meant June 2022 having correctly referred to searches on that date elsewhere in the decision including in the previous sub-paragraph.

27. In reality the complaint here is not about a mistake of fact – the fact found by the Judge was that none of this happened, there have been no searches made and the appellant has not attracted any adverse attention from the authorities in Sr Lanka. The analysis in this paragraph involved an assessment by the Judge of the truth of the appellant’s claim that she was able to leave Sri Lanka in the absence of any apparent warrant for her arrest, notwithstanding the strong desire of the Sri Lankan authorities to arrest her. The Judge found this account improbable and the claim of an intense search for the appellant spanning years to be inconsistent with the absence of a warrant and the appellant’s ability to leave Sri Lanka freely. That was an analysis of the evidence and a conclusion he was entitled to reach on that evidence. The Judge’s analysis did not involve a mistake of fact.

28. Similarly the second complaint in this ground that the Judge made a mistake of fact at [20(ii)] when he found that the appellant was estranged from her husband at the time in 2019 when Manjula was refusing to repay her money is a disagreement with the Judge’s assessment of the evidence and does not identify any mistake of fact. The appellant’s brief evidence at [4] - [6] of her first witness statement was that she married her husband in 2011, their daughter was born in 2012, the marriage broke down and they are now separated, the appellant and her daughter lived in the same house as her husband until they left Sri Lanka in August 2022 and although they lived in the same house the appellant and her daughter lived separately in one room. There was no evidence before the Judge from the appellant or elsewhere about when the appellant became estranged from her husband and started to live separately from him in one room. The Judge’s assessment of the limited evidence provided may not be the same as the interpretation suggested in the grounds of appeal but it was entirely reasonable and did not involve an error of law.

Ground three
29. The Judge records at [20(vi)] of his decision that in her screening interview the appellant said that when came to the United Kingdom she had no intention of returning to Sri Lanka. The Judge notes in the same paragraph that by contrast, the appellant said in her first witness statement dated 21 January 2026 that when she left Sri Lanka her intention was only to leave temporarily and that she did not intend to claim asylum. The Judge then notes the appellant’s oral evidence that her husband had applied for a visit visa as a birthday gift for their daughter who had always wanted to visit the United Kingdom. The Judge concluded that these inconsistencies significantly undermined the appellant’s credibility.

30. Mr Malik submitted that the Judge’s assessment of this evidence at [20(vi)] was flawed because it does not include reference to a second witness statement made by the appellant shortly before the hearing and served the day before the hearing, in which the appellant said that her intention when entering the United Kingdom was to protect herself and her daughter from Manjula and the Sri Lankan authorities. Whilst it is correct that the Judge does not refer to the second statement in his analysis at [20(vi)], I am not persuaded that this means the Judge failed to have regard to the statement. As identified from the passage of Lowe quoted above I should be slow to infer that the Judge has disregarded evidence simply because he has not mentioned it. Here, the force of the Judge’s reasoning, that the appellant gave inconsistent evidence on this issue in her January 2026 witness statement which she signed as a true account, remains notwithstanding the fact the appellant sought later to revert back to her original account in a second witness statement. There was no need for the Judge to refer to the later statement when he was identifying an inconsistency in the former which he found to be significant.

31. This ground also suggests that the Judge misunderstood the appellant’s oral evidence and asserts that the appellant was describing her husband’s intention in applying for a visit visa but not her intention. I am satisfied that this submission is no more than a disagreement with the impression of the evidence formed by the Judge. The Judge was assessing the entire evidence which included the detail of the application for a visit visa that was adduced by the respondent, the appellant’s various explanations for what she intended when making the trip to the United Kingdom and the impression made upon him by the appellant’s answers to questions in cross examination. I am satisfied that the Judge’s conclusion that the appellant had given inconsistent evidence on this topic was a rational and reasonable one to reach on the evidence he was assessing and did not involve an error of law.

Ground four
32. The appellant’s evidence in her interview was that she lent Manjula 750,000 rupees. The promissory note referred however to the sum of 700,000 being lent to Manjula. The Judge concluded at [22(viii)] of his decision that this inconsistency meant he could attach little weight to the promissory note. I am not persuaded that it was unfair for the Judge to reach this conclusion without putting the inconsistency to the appellant as Mr Malik submitted by reference to ground four.

33. The appellant’s case was that she signed the note in front of an Attorney-at-Law in Sri Lanka in 2019 and had recently been able to obtain it so that she could adduce it as evidence the day before the hearing. The appellant was therefore on her evidence very well aware of the Note and its contents including its reference to 700,000 rupees. The appellant had also been provided with a copy of the transcript of her interview which included her answer that the amount she lent Manjula was 750,000 rupees. That figure of 750,000 had been quoted in the respondent’s decision letter and the appellant made no attempt to correct the figure in either of her subsequent witness statements. Again the appellant was well aware that about her evidence that the sum she lent Manjula was 750,000 rupees. This was not therefore an inconsistency that was hidden from the appellant.

34. The fact that the respondent did not put the inconsistency to the appellant is no doubt explained by the fact the evidence was served on the respondent so late – the day before the hearing, long after the decision and long after the respondent conducted a review and maintained the decision. The fact that she had adduced inconsistent evidence left the appellant and her legal team with a forensic problem - whether to confront the clear inconsistency in the evidence or focus attention elsewhere and hope that ‘least said soonest mended’. As the Court of Appeal observed at [5] of Secretary of State for the Home Department v Maheshwaran [2002] EWCA Civ 173, the tribunal will usually in such circumstances, particularly where the appellant is legally represented, entirely fairly remain silent and see how the case unfolds.

35. That is precisely what happened here. Faced with that forensic problem, the appellant chose not to confront the inconsistency in the evidence that she was presenting to the Judge. That was her choice to make but there was nothing unfair about the Judge seeing how the case unfolded and considering the inconsistency as part of his overall assessment of the evidence following the hearing.

Ground five
36. The appellant’s final ground of appeal relates to the Judge’s conclusion that interference with the right to respect for their family and private life enjoyed by the appellant and her daughter would be proportionate given the public interest in effective immigration control. By reference to the written grounds, Mr Malik submitted that the Judge erred by failing to consider the situation as it was on the date of hearing and by speculating about ability of the MS and his son to join the appellant in Sri Lanka at some point in the future.

37. At [14] of his decision the Judge records the appellant’s submission that MS and his son did not have travel documents and that if the appellant and her daughter were removed to Sri Lanka, MS and his son would not be able to join them. This reflected an argument made in the appeal skeleton argument that was before the Judge in which it was said that “the Appellant’s partner and son would have not right to reside in Sri Lanka, he is not legally married to the Appellant and the visa requirements only recognise and grant visas to those legally married”. The supplementary bundle adduced by the appellant the day before the hearing also included a notice about the requirement for visitors to Sri Lanka to have an Electronic Travel Authorisation.

38. It is clear from the above that rather than impermissibly speculating at [29(vi)] about the ability of MS and his son to join the appellant and her daughter in Sri Lanka in the event they were removed there, the Judge was responding to and assessing a specific claim made by the appellant in the case presented to him. The question of whether there was an insurmountable obstacle to the appellant’s relationship with MS continuing in Sri Lanka was clearly relevant to the Judge’s assessment of the proportionality of interference with the family life the Judge found to exist. The appellant asserted that there would be such an obstacle because the couple are not married and therefore MS could not join the appellant in Sri Lanka. The Judge considered that assertion but determined it to be an obstacle that could be surmounted. The appellant’s evidence to the Judge was that she wishes to marry MS. The Judge’s assessment that the appellant could achieve this intention having divorced her husband was not speculation but an assessment of whether the obstacle to the relationship continuing that was being presented was, in the Judge’s evaluation, insurmountable. For reasons that were adequately explained, the Judge’s conclusion was that although there would be a delay in doing so, the obstacle to family reunification could be surmounted. The ground goes on to alternatively complain that the Judge should have considered how long it would take for this obstacle to be surmounted. The Judge however specifically stated that he did give weight to the fact that surmounting the obstacle would involve delay.

39. Overall, the Judge’s assessment of the proportionality of interference with the family life enjoyed by the appellant and her daughter and MS and his son, including his assessment of the best interests of the children, which is also the subject of complaint within this lengthy ground of appeal, was unimpeachable. The Judge identified the strong public interest in maintaining effective immigration control in circumstances where the relationship was established when neither party had leave to remain or a legitimate expectation of being granted permission to stay and where the appellant did not meet the requirements of the Immigration Rules for being permitted to stay. The Judge balanced against that, the interference that removal would involve. In doing so he noted the scant evidence that had been adduced and the fact that there was no question of the children being separated from the parent who was their primary carer. The Judge’s conclusion that the public interest outweighed the appellant’s right to respect for her private and family life was in the circumstances inevitable.

Conclusion
40. Bringing this all together, I am satisfied that the Judge has undertaken a careful and considered assessment of all the evidence holistically and having done so reached the rational conclusion that the appellant’s protection and human rights claims have not been established to the required standard of proof. The grounds of appeal do not identify an error of law in the Judge’s decision and there is no legitimate reason for this Tribunal to interfere with the Judge’s assessment.

Notice of Decision

The appeal is dismissed

The decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Keshvala does not involve an error of law and shall stand.

Luke Bulpitt

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

26 August 2026