If you are visa applicant applying for the UK visa and your application has been refused then filing for uk visa refusal appeal has just become more expensive. In addition to removing ‘appeal rights’ for most applications the Home Office has announced an increase in the Appeal fees for applying to the First-Tier Tribunal.
As part of the changes the fees for Paper hearing have gone up from £ 80 to £ 440 while Oral hearing fees have increased from £ 140 to £ 800.
This is clearly likely to discourage people from filing appeals (which could be a possible aim), as clearly no other Government department in the UK has increased its fees 5 to 7 times.
In our experience this creates an undue pressure on the Home Office caseworkers who receive training in assessing visa applications but are likely to lack the rigorous training/depth of knowledge that a Solicitor would go through in understanding complex legal provisions.
At SmartMove2 UK we have seen that immigration decisions made by caseworkers have been overturned at the Appeal stage due to limited understanding of the Caseworkers – in one of our cases the sponsor had access to maintenance funds in multiple bank accounts, however when assessing the case the ECO had cited the sponsor did not meet the requirement. In court we presented the same evidence that was submitted to the ECO and the Judge agreed with the assessment.
Presently there is a campaign to reduce the fees, however no decision on that has been made yet. Till such time the applicants will continue to bear the brunt of errors made by Caseworkers even if they are unintended in pursuit of getting their UK visas.
