OA000902016

The Appellant sought permission to appeal against this decision, in time, on the basis that the First tier Tribunal Judge had materially erred in law in finding there was no valid appeal in that the Appellant had the right to exercise an out of country appeal and that this was confirmed by the decision in Roohi (2014 Act: saved appeal rights) IJR [2015] UKUT 685 (IAC) . The decision was further procedurally unfair.

Permission to appeal was granted by First tier Tribunal Judge Robertson on 11 January 2018 in the following terms:

This appeal came before the Upper Tribunal for an error of law hearing on 12 March 2018, when it was adjourned for 7 days in order to obtain the Respondent's position on the appeal, in light of the judgment of the Court of Appeal in Ahsan [2017] EWCA Civ 2009 and so that a panel could be convened in the event it was decided that it would be appropriate for the Upper Tribunal to issue guidance.

In his submissions, Mr Khan submitted that we should decide this appeal and that, in light of the judgment in Ahsan , a section 10 decision requiring an appeal out of country is a breach of Article 8 of ECHR. He submitted that the documentary evidence has not changed since the decision of First tier Tribunal Judge Hillis because the Appellant has left the country and the issue is whether the Tribunal needs to hear further oral evidence from her and following Ahsan at [89] and [90] the Tribunal will need to decide whether the video link facilities are adequate for hearing oral evidence.

The parties were given time to consider the, at that time, unreported Presidential decision in AJ (now reported as AJ (s 94B: Kiarie and Byndloss questions) Nigeria [2018] UKUT 115 (IAC) , the headnote of which provides: