Judicial Review Conference 2025 – Key Takeaways
HJT’s annual Judicial Review Conference took place last Friday and was a tremendous success. Our panel of expert speakers including David Chirico KC, Stephanie Harrison KC, David Jones, Mark Symes, Tim Baldwin and Priya Solanki imparted invaluable insights into the best practices when handling judicial reviews in immigration practice.
The day was fuelled with substantive learning coupled with exceptional catering, from breakfast through lunch to our evening networking reception, creating the perfect environment for practitioners to engage with cutting-edge legal developments.
In this blog, we share a glimpse of some of the most useful analysis of case precedence and key messages our speakers delivered.
David Chirico KC: Recent Judicial Review Victories on Issue Estoppel and Legitimate Expectation
David Chirico KC referenced recent judicial decisions that have reinforced two significant legal doctrines: Issue Estoppel, which prevents parties from re-litigating matters previously adjudicated, and Legitimate Expectation, which obligates authorities to uphold commitments they have made.
Issue Estoppel in Practice: R (Islam) v SSHD [2024] EWHC (Admin)In Islam, the First-tier Tribunal found MI was a British citizen and allowed his deportation appeal. When he later applied for a passport, the Passport Office refused without reference to the FTT’s finding. The High Court held that the FTT’s determination created an issue estoppel binding on the Passport Office. The court confirmed issue estoppel applies in public law cases and that findings necessary to a tribunal’s determination will bind the Home Office in subsequent proceedings. However, estoppel may be disapplied where new evidence emerges (meeting Ladd v Marshall criteria), there’s material change in circumstances, or the original decision relied on fraudulent evidence.
Estoppel Across Different Decision Types: R (Tomlinson) v SSHD [2025] EWCA Civ 253, [2025] 3 WLR 9Tomlinson extends these principles where the decisions being challenged appear different on the surface. T’s FTT allowed his deportation revocation appeal on Article 8 grounds; the SSHD then refused his entry clearance application. Though the decisions technically concerned different questions, the Court of Appeal held that issue estoppel applied to the core issue of whether Article 8 rights were engaged. This is significant: practitioners can now rely on estoppel even where subsequent decisions appear formally distinct, provided the underlying human rights issue remains constant.
Legitimate Expectation and “Withdrawal to Grant”: R (HI) v SSHD JR-2024-LON-002059 (11 September 2025)The HI case concerns substantive legitimate expectation. The day before his FTT hearing, a HOPO informed HI that it was “anticipated that refugee leave will be granted, subject to further checks.” Despite this, the SSHD later issued a refusal decision. The Upper Tribunal held HI had a substantive legitimate expectation and provided crucial guidance: a “withdrawal to grant” creates an expectation that further checks relate only to security and criminality, not reconsideration of the claim. If the SSHD frustrates this expectation by reconsidering and refusing on different grounds, this requires fair justification, and internal disagreement between officials will not suffice.
Key takeaway from David Chirico KC: Practitioners should now confidently rely on earlier tribunal findings to challenge contradictory SSHD decisions; carefully document HOPO representations during proceedings; and recognise that “withdrawal to grant” communications carry real legal weight beyond their procedural appearance.
Stephanie Harrison KC’s Irrationality Challenges: Flawed Reasoning and Unfair Differentiation
Stephanie Harrison KC presentation distinguished between two types of irrationality grounds for challenging Home Office decisions.
Substantive vs Process IrrationalitySubstantive irrationality asks whether the decision itself is so unreasonable that no reasonable authority could have reached it. Process irrationality, by contrast, focuses on flaws in the reasoning process, irrelevant considerations, lack of evidence for key steps, or logical errors. Recent case law has refined this further, requiring decision-makers to properly balance competing considerations and remain consistent with the scheme’s purpose.
When Decisions Fail to “Add Up”: R (Asylum Aid) v SSHD [2025] EWHC 316 (Admin) and R (KP) v Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs [2025] EWHC 370 (Admin)
R (Asylum Aid) v SSHD exemplifies a powerful irrationality challenge. The court found a policy requiring stateless persons’ dependants to meet standard family entry requirements “a paradigm example of a perverse policy” because it treated fundamentally different cases identically without justification. Stateless dependants are more vulnerable than other family members, yet the policy lumped them all together.
R (KP) v Secretary of State confirms that process irrationality includes any logical error or critical reasoning gap. The court asks: does the conclusion follow from the evidence, or is there an unexplained leap in reasoning? A decision that “does not add up” is irrational even if the outcome might be defensible in principle.
Key Takeaway from Stephanie Harrison KC: Scrutinise not just whether a decision is defensible, but whether the reasoning is logically coherent, mandatory considerations genuinely addressed, and differentiation between cases properly justified. A gap between evidence and conclusion may be easier to establish than showing the decision is substantively unreasonable.
David Jones: Growing Detention Estate – Scale, Expansion and Concerns
Barrister David Jones presented a sobering picture of detention’s trajectory in immigration enforcement. The detention estate has expanded dramatically, with numbers detained rising 54% from 2022 to the end of 2023. Approximately 19,000 people were detained during the course of 2023/2024, a figure driven partly by the Home Office’s One in One Out scheme, which has intensified detention at the point of entry. The government has added 1,000 beds at Campsfield and Haslar facilities, with a further 290 beds initially planned, demonstrating a policy committed to enabling higher levels of enforcement and returns.
This expansion sits uneasily against the long-standing findings of Stephen Shaw’s 2016 review into welfare in detention of vulnerable persons, which concluded that detention is both overused and ineffective. The review found that “there is too much detention” and that “detention is not a particularly effective means of ensuring that those with no right to remain do in fact leave the UK.” Yet detention continues to increase.
R (Nelson) v SSHD [2024] UKUT 141 (IAC)
Recent case law has further highlighted tensions within detention practice. R (Nelson) v SSHD [2024] established that electronic monitoring conditions must be subject to ongoing review and remain proportionate to individual circumstances, GPS tags that are known not to work serve no useful purpose. More significantly, the January 2025 GPS Expansion Pilot Evaluation revealed that tagging asylum seekers did not improve compliance, with no statistically significant difference in outcomes between tagged and untagged groups.
Medical Justice v SSHD [2025] EWCA Civ 251
The Adults at Risk framework has undergone significant judicial scrutiny. In Medical Justice v SSHD [2025], the Court of Appeal upheld the importance of timely assessment when vulnerable detainees present medical evidence of harm, whilst also recognising that informed decision-making requires balancing the detainee’s welfare against the Home Office’s need to gather evidence, though not indefinitely.
R (ADL) v SSHD [2024] EWHC 994 (Admin)R (ADL) v SSHD [2024] EWHC 994 (Admin) further clarified that electronic monitoring conditions can breach Article 8 ECHR where they fail to consider proportionality or practical feasibility for individual cases.
Key takeaway from David Jones: Advisors should systematically challenge detention where clients have medical evidence of vulnerability, question whether monitoring conditions serve any demonstrable purpose given pilot findings, and leverage Shaw Review principles still echoed in recent judgments that detention is both ineffective and harmful. The expansion of capacity does not signal that detention is settling as policy; rather, it signals detention will be used more frequently, making robust challenge work essential.
Mark Symes: Key Public Law Developments
Barrister Mark Symes provided practitioners with a comprehensive overview of the critical public law developments shaping judicial review in 2025.
Working Routes: New Clarity on Voluntary WorkOne of the most significant developments affecting working routes concerns the definition of voluntary work. In Andrews [2025] EWHC 64 (Admin), the court clarified that simply working without remuneration is insufficient to satisfy the statutory definition under section 44 of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998. Instead, individuals must be formally employed by a charity, voluntary organisation, associated fund-raising body, or statutory body with no entitlement to monetary payments or benefits in kind.
This judgment has practical implications for sponsors looking to engage volunteers under the immigration rules, particularly in the charity sector. The emphasis on formal employment status means that ad-hoc volunteering arrangements may struggle to meet the regulatory threshold.
Equally important is Tammina [2025] EWCA Civ 24, which addressed procedural fairness in sponsor licence cases. The Court of Appeal confirmed that while the Home Office must notify migrants of matters that could defeat their application, this obligation doesn’t extend to matters of which they should reasonably have been aware, such as the possibility of sponsor licence revocation. This distinction is crucial for practitioners advising clients on reputational and compliance issues affecting their sponsorship status.
Sponsor Licences: Balancing Fairness with IntegrityThe courts have grappled throughout 2025 with how to maintain procedural fairness whilst protecting the integrity of the sponsorship system. Hartford Care Group [2024] EWHC 3308 (Admin) provides important guidance on genuineness assessments: it would be irrational to adjudicate on whether sponsored jobs are genuine solely by reference to contracts mandating guaranteed hours. Job vacancies can be perfectly genuine without such stipulations, and it would be false to assume that local authorities would universally make such specifications.
However, Prestige Social Care [2025] EWHC 2860 (Admin) established that decisions finding reasonable grounds that a role is “not genuine” constitute findings of dishonesty or reprehensible conduct. Consequently, such determinations must be accompanied by Balajigari procedural fairness safeguards, requiring decision-makers to invite representations from sponsors before making adverse findings.
A notable tension emerged in Prestwick Care [2025] EWCA Civ 184, where the court confirmed there is no duty to consider the wider public interest when revoking a care sector sponsor licence, even where such revocation may have significant implications for care provision. However, the court did acknowledge that discrepancies between Certificate of Sponsorship job descriptions and the reality of roles don’t automatically justify dishonesty findings.
Leave Outside the Rules: The Human ElementTwo significant decisions underscore the courts’ commitment to individualized decision-making in discretionary applications. QP1 [2025] EWHC 1388 (Admin) confirmed that leave outside the rules (LOTR) should be sparingly granted and cannot be raised for the first time in a PAP letter. Applicants must delineate compelling circumstances beyond those already raised in their primary application.
Yet Hippolyte [2025] EWCA Civ 1493 provided important counterbalance, emphasizing that under the non-fettering principle, the Home Office must not close its ears to any matters. Unjustifiably harsh circumstances are the only relevant test. The court warned against undue insistence on forms being completed, as this risks losing sight of the holistic approach necessary when reviewing a real human being’s application.
Key Takeaway from Mark Symes: The judiciary remains committed to both procedural fairness and the integrity of immigration control. The consistent theme in practice remains that the public authorities must exercise their discretionary powers fairly and rationally, with clear reasoning, whilst courts remain appropriately cautious about intervening in matters requiring institutional expertise or democratic accountability. For practitioners, the message is clear: supporting your clients requires dedicated attention to procedural requirements, robust evidence gathering, and articulate submissions addressing the decision-maker’s legitimate concerns, not simply reliance on the rules themselves.
Tim Baldwin: Homelessness Legislation After Asylum “Move On” Changes
Tim Baldwin’s presentation focused on how the asylum accommodation termination framework intersects with homelessness duties under Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996.
The Core IssueAsylum seekers receive 28 days’ notice to vacate accommodation after their claim is determined. This timeframe is misaligned with local authority homelessness prevention duties, which last 56 days. In September 2025, the government paused a 56-day pilot for most single adults (except those pregnant, over 65, or with disabilities), creating significant practical challenges.
Key Legislative FrameworkThe notice period derives from Regulation 22 of the Asylum Support Regulations 2000, which triggers automatic tenancy termination once asylum support ends. This operates independently of homelessness law, creating a structural tension.
Homelessness DutiesOnce someone presents as homeless, local authorities must assess priority need (s. 189), provide prevention/relief duties (ss. 189A-189B for 56 days), and potentially main housing duty (s. 193) if they have priority need and weren’t homeless intentionally. “Priority need” includes vulnerable persons, determined by individual assessment under the Hotak principles, not statistical generalizations.
Key takeaway from Tim Baldwin: Refugees face a critical housing gap. The 28-day move-on period (56 days under the paused pilot for some) doesn’t align with local authority homelessness prevention duties, creating systematic homelessness risk. Poor information sharing worsens the problem. Practitioners should understand that priority need assessments are qualitative and individual-focused, and that many refugees require specialist accommodation beyond standard social housing, making JR challenges on suitability and prevention duty compliance increasingly relevant.
Priya Solanki: Recent Developments and challenges in Trafficking cases
Barrister Priya Solanki reviewed key developments in trafficking litigation, covering discretionary leave, public order exclusions, identification decisions, delays, and exploitation under UK law. She summarised recent case outcomes and their implications for those advising victims within a stricter legal system.
SSHD v S[2025] EWCA Civ 188
In SSHD v S [2025] EWCA Civ 188, the Court of Appeal confirmed that victims with deportation orders can be excluded from the KTT discretionary leave concession, holding that such policy choices are neither irrational nor unlawful. Meanwhile, attempts to push back the tight Public Order Disqualification deadlines under the Modern Slavery Statutory Guidance (v4.2, paras 14.256–14.262) fell flat in UNG v SSHD, where the court found the refusal to extend time was entirely open to the decision-maker.
DS v SSHD[2025] EWHC 2849 (Admin)
Further efforts to undermine the POD policy itself were dismissed in DS v SSHD [2025] EWHC 2849 (Admin), where the High Court held that Article 13(3) ECAT plainly permits a public order exemption even during the recovery period. Alongside this, tribunals reinforced limits on protection for victims facing criminal proceedings: in KM (Nigeria) [2025] UKUT 92 (IAC), the Upper Tribunal confirmed that neither Article 14(1)(a)nor Article 26 ECAT requires automatic leave, or Article 8 damages where the prosecution arises from forced criminality.
AAM v SSHD[2025] EWHC 447 (Admin)
But the courts did step in where the Home Office’s reasoning went off the rails. In AAM v SSHD [2025] EWHC 447 (Admin), judges made clear that kidnap is expressly recognised in r.3(5)(ii) of the 2022 Regulations as a potential trafficking “means.”
SAC v SSHD[2025] EWHC 1400 (Admin)
Similarly, in SAC v SSHD [2025], the court faulted the Home Office for ignoring classic forced labour indicators listed in guidance, such as excessive hours, dependence, and lack of wages, reminding decision-makers of the low threshold at the Reasonable Grounds stage.
FH v SSHD[2024] EWHC 1327 (Admin)
Conversely, in FH v SSHD [2024], an eye-watering four-year conclusive grounds delay was still held lawful, underscoring just how high the hurdle is for systemic challenges.
Key take-aways from Priya Solanki: Keep evidence tight, timely, and complete; challenge reasoning, not policy; push hard where the Home Office has overlooked indicators of exploitation or misunderstood asylum status; and remember that trafficking identification can still unlock support even when other protection has been granted. Above all, expect a system that moves slowly, defends its policies stoutly, and only yields where clear irrationality can be exposed.
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Written by Shareen Khan – Legal Content Writer, HJT Training
Disclaimer: This blog post is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Immigration advisors should consult the full decisions and official policy documents when advising clients on specific cases.
