Our Chief Executive and Legal and Parliamentary Officer accompanied by two of our Trustees (Sophie Barrett-Brown and Hazar El-Chamaa), and Co-convenor of the Family and Personal Migration Working Group (Nath Gbikpi) met with the Admin Review (AR) team on 11 September 2020.
At the meeting, discussion centred on:
- Changes to the Home Office’s operations in response to COVID-19;
- The Home Office’s response to the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration’s Report on AR;
- ILPA’s concerns with how AR is functioning.
In terms of the functioning of AR, we raised concerns over communication between Home Office teams. The Home Office recognised that they needed to improve but highlighted that there are monthly calls between caseworkers and AR teams and more regular calls between caseworkers and policy teams about the EU Settlement Scheme.
We discussed the quality of AR refusal letters. These refusals sometimes replicate basic errors in the initial decision such as referring to non-existent documents giving the impression that the initial decision is at times ‘rubber stamped’. The Home Office agreed to review specific AR refusals.
The team also suggested that greater evidential flexibility would be welcomed. We raised examples where a prescriptive approach to the Immigration Rules led to perverse outcomes. The Home Office agreed to review specific refusals concerning evidential flexibility so that they could improve initial decision making.
The full note of the meeting can be found here.