Campbell, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

An application to vary immigration leave is valid only if made on the prescribed form, completed as required and accompanied by the specified documents. Information in accompanying documents may cure some omissions, but substantial compliance is insufficient where material requirements remain unmet. A failure to make a valid application before existing leave expires prevents the statutory right of appeal. Judicial review relief may also be refused where the substantive immigration requirements could not have been satisfied on the available evidence.

The claimant, a Jamaican national, entered the United Kingdom as a visitor and later sought to remain to continue GCSE studies. Before his leave expired, he submitted an incomplete application form with supporting documents. The Secretary of State subsequently treated a further disputed document as an application and refused leave.

The claimant sought judicial review, contending that the May application was valid when read with its accompanying documents, or alternatively that there had been substantial compliance with the Immigration Rules. The central issue was whether the May application was valid and therefore capable of generating a right of appeal.

1. The claim was dismissed. The May application was not valid because it failed to comply with the formal requirements of Rule 32 of the Immigration Rules.
2. The omission concerning the claimant’s progress in his studies was cured by the accompanying documents. However, the failure to identify the relevant type of educational institution under Rule 57 was not cured. Nor was the failure to state the monthly financial support received from the claimant’s aunt. The single bank statement supplied did not satisfy the requirement for financial evidence covering three months.
3. There was no developed doctrine of substantial compliance in this area. The court applied the approach in Sithole v Secretary of State for the Home Department, which treated the requirements governing the completion and submission of immigration forms as stringent. The claimant’s reliance on a textbook suggestion favouring substantial compliance was unsupported by authority.
4. The Secretary of State’s delay in responding did not make the Secretary of State responsible for the claimant’s failure to complete the form. A policy of accepting imperfect applications in other cases did not require the Secretary of State to treat this invalid application as valid.
5. In any event, the evidence did not establish that the claimant satisfied Rule 57.1. The exception in the Immigration Directorate’s Instructions for a child attending a maintained school had not been engaged, because there was no evidence that the claimant or his aunt would seek to arrange paid study at a private educational institution.
6. Because no valid application had been made before the original leave expired, the claimant had no right of appeal under section 61 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. Judicial review therefore failed.