Krasniqi v Secretary Of State For the Home Department

An appellate court should not interfere with a tribunal’s assessment of whether a locality is a claimant’s home area unless the conclusion crosses the established perversity threshold. Whether an area is a person’s home area is a matter of fact and degree. A nearby village may properly be assessed by reference to conditions in the neighbouring town or municipality, even where a municipal boundary separates them. An appeal raising no error of law, but seeking to revisit factual merits, is impermissible.

The applicant, a Roma from Kosovo, challenged the refusal of his asylum and European Convention claims. The adjudicator rejected his account as lacking credibility but accepted that Roma faced substantial difficulties in Kosovo. The Immigration Appeal Tribunal upheld those findings and concluded that the municipality of Klina was safe, treating it as the applicant’s home area and finding no real risk of persecution or treatment contrary to Article 3.

The applicant renewed his application for permission to appeal, arguing that the Tribunal had wrongly treated Klina as his home area and had failed to address the issue as an internal flight alternative. The central question was whether those conclusions disclosed an error of law rather than a disagreement with factual assessment.

Laws LJ delivered the judgment of the court. Jonathan Parker LJ agreed.

1. Permission refused. The application sought to revisit the factual merits of the asylum claim and went beyond the proper limits of an appeal from the Immigration Appeal Tribunal.
2. The Tribunal was entitled to uphold the adjudicator’s adverse credibility findings. The adjudicator had identified discrepancies in the applicant’s accounts and given reasons which the Tribunal considered sensible. The fresh statement and complaint about the interview did not amount to a substantive challenge to that reasoning.
3. Whether a locality is a claimant’s home area is a matter of fact and degree. The Tribunal’s conclusion could be challenged only if it crossed the recognised perversity threshold. A village less than 12 kilometres from Klina could properly be treated as part of the same home area. The fact that it lay across a municipality boundary made no material difference.
4. The Tribunal had considered the relevant country material, including the later UNHCR assessment. It was entitled to find that Klina was safe, to treat conditions there as evidence of conditions in the nearby village of Trstnik, and not to analyse Klina as an internal flight alternative.
5. The application for permission to appeal was refused. The applicant’s Community Legal Services Funding certificate was subject to detailed assessment.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): renewed application for permission to appeal refused. The court upheld the Immigration Appeal Tribunal’s approach and found no error of law.
• Immigration Appeal Tribunal: dismissed the applicant’s appeal against the adjudicator’s decision.
• Adjudicator: dismissed the appeal against the Secretary of State’s refusal of the asylum and European Convention claims.