OA076032012

On 14 May 2013, in granting permission to appeal, I gave the following directions:

The Entry Clearance Officer refused the application because he considered the language test provider, Active Training English Institute in Algeria was not on the United Kingdom authorities accredited list of providers. That allegation was otherwise unsupported. It was apparently wrong: the ESOL certificate was from Language Solutions in Algeria which was accredited. The Entry Clearance Officer did not otherwise challenge the certificate.

The First-tier Tribunal Judge dismissed the appeal because the copy of the certificate he had did not contain a copy of its second page which was not the reason for refusing the application by the ECO. It was arguably procedurally unfair for the Judge to rely on a reason on which the appellant did not have notice.

It is probable that this occurred because, in breach of directions, the Entry Clearance Officer did not supply a copy of it, see [8] of the determination. This has, arguably, resulted in a procedural unfairness of which (at the moment) only the Entry Clearance Officer knows the answer.

The Entry Clearance Officer must respond to the appellant�s grounds of appeal by 18 June 2013 and must assert (a) whether it is the respondent�s case that the certificate submitted to it was defective in the way found by the Judge and (b) whether the respondent maintains the reason it advanced for refusing entry clearance, namely, the certificate was not from an accredited source and (c) any other reason why the appellant�s appeal should not be allowed.