OA080722014

It will be convenient to refer to [OC] as the appellant, as she was before the First-tier Judge, and to refer to the Entry Clearance Officer as the respondent, accordingly.

The appellant appealed to the First-tier Judge against the respondent's decision of 10 June 2014 refusing to grant her indefinite leave to enter the United Kingdom as the child of a parent settled in the United Kingdom. The Entry Clearance Officer was not satisfied that the sponsor, the appellant's mother, had sole responsibility for her upbringing or that there were serious or compelling reasons making her exclusion undesirable.

There was also a purported clarification by the grandmother of some of the responses on which the Entry Clearance Officer relied. She said that she had been confused at the telephone interview. She said that it was the sponsor who had wanted the appellant to attend the particular school and she carried out those wishes and ensured the child did attend.

The Entry Clearance Officer had not said the evidence of the father and grandmother in interview was identical, but both had described the same arrangements of monthly payments and the payments were transferred and the level of contact and the role of the grandparents, so it was clearly corroborated and there was no real direction towards that important feature of the evidence by the judge.

It was arguably irrational to decide as the judge had done at paragraph 24 on the basis of the latest statement by the sponsor as it had always been the purpose of the application for her to claim sole responsibility and it would be surprising if she did not say she had such responsibility and it was difficult to understand why the judge should give such weight to it. It should be contrasted with what was said in the interviews and the ultimate findings at the end of paragraph 24 with regard to visits and money in contrast to the interviews.