Omuwumi Hamidat Hamzat v Secretary of State for the Home Department
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Her Honour Judge Coe |
| Judgment Date | 04 February 2015 |
| Neutral Citation | [2015] EWHC 499 (Admin) |
| Docket Number | CO/10502/2013 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Date | 04 February 2015 |
[2015] EWHC 499 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC2A 2LL
Her Honour Judge Coe QC
(Sitting as a Deputy Judge of the High Court)
CO/10502/2013
Mr D Mold (instructed by Daniel Aramide Solicitors) appeared on behalf of the Claimant
Mr M Gullick (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared on behalf of the Defendant
THE DEPUTY JUDGE: This is an application for judicial review in respect of the decision of the Secretary of State which is at page 46 in the bundle and dated 15 May 2013. Permission was granted to bring this application for judicial review. It was granted on the very limited consideration as to whether or not the Secretary of State had properly taken into account the "no ties" test under paragraph 276ADE(vi) and whether there had been the necessary consideration of that specific issue. It is therefore a very limited permission, and the arguments that I have heard and considered in the skeletons by reference to the authorities are necessarily also limited.
The Claimant's case is that the Secretary of State failed to consider the letters sent with her application from her mother and grandmother. Her mother and grandmother are settled in this country. She came to this country in 2007 from Nigeria, aged 17. She stayed here illegally for some time until she made the application, and that application, as I indicated, was refused. In support of her application, the letters from mother and grandmother say that her father, who was in Nigeria, died I think in 2006 and I have seen his death certificate, and that the school, having been contacted in about 2008, said that the Claimant could no longer stay there, and that these were all features put forward in support of the application, and which it is said the Secretary of State did not proper consider.
It is argued that by reference to the key case of Ogundimu (Article 8 — new rules) Nigeria [2013] UKUT 60 (IAC) setting out the details of considerations of no ties, in particular at paragraph 119 of that judgment, and at paragraphs 123 and 125, and also by reference to the authority of Bossadi(paragraph 276ADE; suitability; ties) [2015] UKUT 42 (IAC): that the failure to take into account the matters set out in those letters was an error of law; that failure to consider those features was a material consideration; that it resulted in there being no appropriate assessment by the Secretary of State; and that in those circumstances the decision should be quashed and should be remitted for a new decision to be made.
It is right to say, looking at the final paragraph of the decision letter on page 146, that there is no mention or reference to the letters from the family members and there is no consideration of the contents of those letters. What the decision letter says is simply: "you have spent the majority of your life living in Nigeria, and in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it is not accepted that in the period of time that you've been in the UK you have lost ties to your home country. Therefore the Secretary of State is not satisfied that you can meet the requirements of rule 276ADE(vi)". Of course, therefore, the Claimant is right to say that there is no reference and no specific consideration of the matters set out in the letter.
I should say that it is perfectly clear that the Claimant's position here is somewhat different, in particular, to the Ogundimu case. She spent the first 17 and a half years, I think, of her life in Nigeria, and has been here since 2007 only. She is not somebody who came here as a child and has spent the majority of her time in this country.
On behalf of the Secretary of State it is said first of all that it is...
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