United Kingdom Immigration and Asylum (AIT/IAC) Unreported Judgments

 

Upper Tribunal

(Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Appeal Number: IA/07266/2014

 

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

 

Heard at Glasgow	Determination promulgated
on 2 September 2014	On 3 September 2014

Before

 

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE MACLEMAN

 

Between

 

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT

Appellant

and

 

MUHAMMED BILAL SAEED

 

Respondent

 

For the Appellant: Ms N Loughran, of Loughran & Co., Solicitors

For the Respondent: Mr K Young, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

 

No anonymity order requested or made

 

DETERMINATION AND REASONS

 

1.      The parties are as described above, but are referred to in the rest of this determination as they were in the First-tier Tribunal.

 

2.      The SSHD appeals against a determination by First-tier Tribunal Judge Handley, promulgated on 12 May 2014, allowing the appellant’s appeal under Article 8 ECHR. The grounds correctly identify that the judge gave no reasons for considering this case outside the requirements of the Immigration Rules.

 

3.      In course of submissions on remaking the decision, it became common ground that the terms of the Rules for leave to remain as a fiancé are satisfied, apart from the requirement to make such an application from abroad, and that the case is truly one which turns on whether it is proportionate in all the circumstances to insist on that formality; on which the authority, even since the major amendments to the Rules on family and private life, is Chikwamba v SSHD [2008] Imm AR 700.

 

4.      I think both representatives also accepted that the position in that light is finely balanced. There would be some delay and further expense but no great inconvenience to the appellant and his fiancée if he had to apply again from Pakistan; but there is nothing adverse in his immigration history, and no significant public interest to be served by keeping to the very letter of the Rules on this one point. I find that the balance falls in his favour.

 

5.      The determination of the First-tier Tribunal is set aside; but the appellant’s appeal, as brought to the First-tier Tribunal, is again allowed.

 

 

2 September 2014

Judge of the Upper Tribunal