OA078102015

This is an appeal against the determination of First-tier Tribunal Judge Birk, promulgated on 18 th August 2016, following a hearing at Birmingham on 12 th August 2016. In the determination, the judge dismissed the appeal of the Appellant, whereupon the Appellant subsequently applied for, and was granted, permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal, and thus the matter comes before me.

The judge held that the Appellant's Sponsor was unable to produce a copy of the employer's letter as required under Appendix FM-SE A1.2.2(b). It was true that subsequent letters had been produced from the same employer. However, no copy of the employer's letter dated 2013 had been produced. The Appellant's representative had sought to argue that the employer's letter did not contain all the details initially, but if one looked at the later letter of 24 th October 2014, it still did not meet all of the requirements in Appendix FM-SE A1.2.2(b)(iii). The judge went on to say that

"The refusal letter refers to there being no such employer's letter with the application. On the basis that I have not seen a copy of the 2013 letter, that the Sponsors accepts that the 2013 letter did not contain all the details required I am not able to find that a correctly formatted letter was more likely to have been submitted with the application ..." (paragraph 9).

The grounds of application state that it was wrong for the judge to conclude that the Sponsor had not included all the details required under Appendix FM, because all that had happened was that "it was not as verbose as the second letter" (see paragraph 5). This is plainly wrong and does the drafter of the Grounds of Appeal no credit whatsoever. It is wrong for the reasons that I will come to below.

On 27 th November 2016, permission to appeal was granted on the basis that the Sponsor's evidence regarding the letter of employment may have been misconstrued.