NC (Zambia) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

A tribunal’s determination must be read fairly as a whole. An isolated or inartful statement should not be subjected to detailed linguistic analysis where the determination, read in context, shows that the tribunal understood the material legal position. In an application for permission to appeal from the Upper Tribunal, the applicant must show both a real prospect of success and either an important point of principle or practice or another compelling reason for a further appeal.

The applicant, a Zambian national, entered the United Kingdom as a student migrant and made a further application for leave to remain. The First-tier Tribunal dismissed her appeal against refusal of leave and later dismissed her Article 8 claim after the Upper Tribunal remitted the matter for reconsideration.

She argued that the First-tier Tribunal had misunderstood her immigration status because her leave was extended under section 3 C of the Immigration Act 1971, and that the Upper Tribunal had wrongly found no material error of law. She sought renewed permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal.

1. Permission refused. The applicant failed to show that a further appeal would have a real prospect of success.
2. The requirement for permission to appeal from the Upper Tribunal was not satisfied. The proposed appeal raised neither an important point of principle or practice nor another compelling reason for the Court of Appeal to hear it.
3. A tribunal’s determination, like a judgment, must be read fairly as a whole and not subjected to detailed linguistic analysis. Read in that way, the First-tier Tribunal had not been under a misapprehension about the applicant’s immigration status.
4. The First-tier Tribunal’s reference to the applicant having no leave to remain was understood as referring to the expiry of her student leave. No issue had been raised requiring consideration of section 3 C. There was no reason to infer that the expert tribunal was suggesting that section 3 C did not apply.
5. The Upper Tribunal was therefore entitled to conclude that the First-tier Tribunal’s determination contained no material error of law. The renewed application was refused.

• Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber): upheld the First-tier Tribunal’s determination and dismissed the appeal.
• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): refused renewed permission to appeal.