Nicholas Ostrowski acts in recent Judicial Review

In a recent judicial review the Upper Tribunal held that time does not start to run for appealing a decision of the Secretary of State (an ‘appealable decision’) until a properly constituted notice of appeal which is compliant with the Immigration (Notices) Regulations 2003 has been served on the applicant.

The time limit for appealing an appealable decision is strict and gives recipients only 14 days to apply to the tribunal to appeal. However, in R (Zakoan Chowdhury) v First-tier Tribunal JR-2023-LON-000104 the Upper Tribunal (UTJ Blundell) held that a decision made by the Secretary of State in November 2016 could still be validly appealed by the recipient in November 2022 when he applied to appeal the decision because the November 2016 decision was not compliant with the Immigration (Notices) Regulations 2003.

The Judge granted the Secretary of State permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal as he accepted that there was some tension between his judgment and the Court of Appeal decision of Marepally v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWCA Civ 855, [2022] Imm A.R. 1341.

Nicholas Ostrowski appeared for the Secretary of State.