Appealing an Unsuccessful Asylum Decision

If your asylum claim fails, and is refused by the Home Office, you should be granted the right to appeal the decision to the independent Immigration and Asylum Chamber of the First-tier Tribunal. You must make sure that your appeal is lodged within the given deadline (usually 14 days). If you try to lodge your appeal late, you will need a good reason of the tribunal might reject the appeal.

Once your appeal is lodged, you will receive you appeal number and some initial directions (like instructions) from the tribunal. Usually, the Home Office is required to provide a full bundle of all the evidence they looked at when they refused your claim. Once they have done this, or if they fail to do this, you will need to provide a bundle of any new evidence you want the tribunal to look at.

In practice, it makes sense to put everything in your bundle – the evidence you sent to the Home Office AND any new evidence you have – because the Home Office bundles are often not appropriate.

It may take more than six months before your appeal is heard by the tribunal but that time passes quickly and you should use it to gain extra evidence to support your claim. You can use the Home Office refusal decision as a guide. For example, if they thought evidence was missing, get it. If they wanted to see evidence from a particular person, get them to provide a statement. And if they thought something needed explaining, explain it.

The hearing will be before an independent judge. They will have read the evidence before the hearing but they will also listen to the evidence presented at the hearing, including those involving witnesses.

Normally, the Home Office sends a representative known as a presenting officer (PO) to the hearing. The PO will ask you a lot of questions and they will then explain to the judge why the appeal should not succeed (i.e. why the judge should agree with the Home Office’s refusal decision). After the PO has had a turn, you can then talk to the judge, or instruct one your expert solicitor who will explain why your appeal should succeed.

Our expert solicitors have many years of experiencing preparing and presenting appeals. We are frequently told by judges that they enjoy our appeals because they know, just by seeing Latitude Law, that the evidence will be clear and well presented.