IA247192015

For the Respondent: Ms N Willocks-Briscoe, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

The Appellant, a national of Sri Lanka, appealed to the First-tier Tribunal against a decision of the Respondent to refuse his application for leave to remain in the UK as a Tier 4 (General) Student. First-tier Tribunal Judge Fletcher-Hill dismissed the appeal in a decision dated 27 th March 2017. The Appellant now appeals with permission granted by Upper Tribunal Judge Allen on 23 rd March 2018.

The Grounds of Appeal can be broken into two main areas. It is firstly contended that the judge erred in her assessment of the Document Verification Report and the letters from the Appellant's father's bank. The second main ground is that the judge erred in failing to consider the appeal under Article 8 of the ECHR.

In granting permission to appeal on a renewed application to the Upper Tribunal, Upper Tribunal Judge Allen considered that it was arguable that the judge had erred in failing to consider human rights issues which had been identified in the skeleton argument before the First-tier Tribunal.

A number of issues are raised in the Grounds of Appeal in relation to the timing of emails between the Secretary of State and the bank and the time difference and raising issues in relation to the reliability of the verification report in this context. However, these were not issues taken in the First-tier Tribunal. Further, no submission was made that these were obvious issues that the judge should have considered.