Muhammad Khurram, R (on the application of) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department

For service under article 8ZA(2) of the Immigration (Leave to Enter and Remain) Order 2000, a correspondence address must be provided by the person affected or by that person's authorised representative. An address supplied by a sponsor educational institution is not, without agency, an address provided by the person for correspondence.

Where no postal or e-mail correspondence address has been provided, however, an address supplied by the sponsor may be the person's last-known or usual place of abode under article 8ZA(3)(a)(i). Recorded postal service to that address engages the rebuttable presumption in article 8ZB that notice was given. Actual knowledge of the notice is not required.

The applicant sought judicial review of the Secretary of State's refusal of leave to remain on private-life and article 8 grounds. He did not challenge the merits of that refusal. He contended that a prior decision curtailing his student leave had not been lawfully given, with the consequence that his later application had been made in time and attracted an in-country right of appeal.

The curtailment notice had been sent by recorded delivery to a United Kingdom address supplied to the Secretary of State by the applicant's Tier 4 sponsor. The central issue was whether that was effective service under the Immigration (Leave to Enter and Remain) Order 2000.

1. Claim dismissed. The curtailment notice was lawfully given. The applicant's leave consequently ended on 20 January 2014, and his June 2014 application did not give rise to an in-country appeal under the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002.

2. Article 8ZA(2)(c) requires an address provided for correspondence by the person affected, or by that person's representative. Its ordinary meaning does not include an address supplied by a third party merely because that party holds the person's contact details. A student sponsor is not, without more, the student's authorised agent or representative for this purpose. The statutory definition of representative and its connection with immigration advice and services confirms that conclusion.

3. The narrower construction did not prevent effective service in the circumstances. Where the person has provided no postal or e-mail correspondence address, article 8ZA(3)(a)(i) permits postal service at the person's last-known or usual place of abode. An address supplied by a sponsor is capable of being such an address. The alternative mechanisms in article 8ZA provide no reason to extend article 8ZA(2)(c) beyond its natural meaning.

4. Here, the Secretary of State sent the notice by recorded delivery to the address held by the sponsor. On the evidence, it was the applicant's last-known or usual place of abode. Under article 8ZB(1)(a)(i), it was deemed delivered two days after posting unless the contrary was proved. The applicant produced no evidence capable of rebutting that presumption. Applying R (Arslan Mahmood) v SSHD [2016] UKUT 0057 (IAC), actual knowledge of the notice was unnecessary.

5. The Secretary of State could not reopen, at the substantive hearing, the issue whether permission should have been refused as out of time. In any event, the Tribunal indicated that it would have extended time had that issue required decision.

not stated in the judgment.