Global Vision College Ltd, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

When applying the mandatory 20% refusal-rate criterion for Highly Trusted Sponsor status, the Secretary of State may count all relevant visa or leave refusals. There is no general public law duty to investigate the individual merits of every refusal or determine whether the sponsor was at fault.

A limited discretion may arise where compelling circumstances justify departure from the criterion, including a refusal shown to be factually incorrect. Mere disagreement with an Entry Clearance Officer’s assessment does not engage that discretion. An interview may be used to verify the accuracy of a Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies and discrepancies may undermine its evidential value without creating an additional immigration requirement.

The claimant, a further education college sponsoring overseas students under Tier 4 of the Points Based System, applied for Highly Trusted Sponsor status. The application was refused because its refusal rate exceeded the mandatory 20% threshold. Its Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies allocation was reduced to zero and its sponsor licence was subsequently revoked.

The claimant challenged those decisions by judicial review. It argued that 64 student refusals were based on an unlawful or factually erroneous assessment of students’ ability to explain how the college had assessed their English, and that the Secretary of State had unlawfully failed to exercise a discretion to disregard them.

1. Claim dismissed. The refusal-rate criterion was lawful and the Secretary of State was not required routinely to examine the circumstances of every refusal. The policy allowed for matters which a sponsor could not reasonably anticipate.
2. The relevant calculation included the refusals in dispute. The claimant’s challenge was concerned with disagreement about the significance of discrepancies between the CAS and students’ interview answers, rather than demonstrated factual errors.
3. An Entry Clearance Officer was entitled to interview a student to check the veracity of a CAS. The refusals were based on the conclusion that discrepancies undermined the reliability of the CAS, not on an additional requirement that a student must explain the college’s method of English assessment. This was distinct from the statutory and policy requirements governing the validity of a CAS.
4. The discretion recognised in the authorities was limited. It could be exercised where circumstances were sufficiently compelling or where a refusal was shown to be factually incorrect. The claimant had not shown that the 64 refusals fell within that category.
5. The Secretary of State had not unlawfully fettered her discretion. The letter relied upon did not promise reconsideration of every refusal which the sponsor considered erroneous. It referred to factually incorrect decisions, and the Secretary of State had in fact discounted one such refusal.
6. The court did not determine the claim on the alternative basis that the refusal rate would still have exceeded 20% even if the disputed refusals had been excluded.