OA021932014

The respondent to this appeal is a citizen of Jamaica born on 4 December 1990. The appellant is the ECO, who has appealed with the permission of the First-tier Tribunal against a decision of Judge of the First-tier Tribunal Stokes, allowing the respondent's appeal against a decision of the ECO made on 11 December 2013 outside the rules on Article 8 grounds. The appellant conceded she could not meet the requirements of Appendix FM of the rules.

It is more convenient to refer to the parties as they were before the First-tier Tribunal. I shall therefore refer to Ms Roach from now on as "the appellant" and the ECO as "the respondent".

The respondent applied for permission to appeal on the basis that the judge had made a misdirection in law. The appellant failed to meet the requirements of the rules by a wide margin and this should have formed a weighty factor in the judge's assessment of proportionality. The judge erred by failing to direct herself that in general the rules codified the categories of persons for whom the UK placed weight on the importance of family reunion. Finally, the judge erred by giving undue weight to evidence of the murder rate in Jamaica given the appellant had not received any threats.

The First-tier Tribunal granted permission to appeal. It was unclear whether the judge had identified compelling circumstances supporting a claim for leave outside the rules ( SSHD v SS (Congo) [2015] EWCA Civ 387 ).

Mr Tufan said the correct rules had been applied and the appellant did not meet them. The judge erred in paragraph 23 in directing herself because she had not applied the test explained in Singh & Khalid v SSHD [2015] EWCA Civ 74 . She also erred in making the proportionality balancing exercise because she failed realise the threshold is higher in entry clearance cases following SS (Congo) .