The First Tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) have issued new guidance.

All appeals which have been listed on 20th March 2020 to 20th April 2020 before the First Tier Tribunal have been vacated due to the Covid-19 Pandemic.

The First Tier Tribunal are piloting a new scheme where all Full Hearings for the foreseeable will be transferred to Case Management Review Hearings. All hearings now will be conducted remotely. All those who have had their hearings vacated will be notified of a new date and their full hearing will be converted to a Case Management Hearing. Unless the matter is exceptional case i.e. Bail Hearings.

What does this mean?

The reason why hearings has been converted to a Case Management Review Hearing is in order for the Judge to determine whether the case should proceed to a full hearing. If decided it is not necessary the Appellant’s case will be decided on the papers only.

The court has released directions in terms of what needs to be done once a Notice has been received:

  • Within 5 working days of receipt of the Notice of Hearing the Appellant needs to provide contact numbers and email addresses to the Tribunal in order that they are able to contact all parties involved (i.e. solicitor and barrister). You also have to advise the Court whether you and the other parties have access to Skype (or other remote platforms) as it may be possible that your case can proceed in this way.
  • If you are happy for the matter to proceed on the basis of solely providing papers for the Judge to decide your matter then you have to provide with 15 working days of receiving your notice of hearing the evidence you wish to submit in support of your hearing (however this cannot be more than 50 pages) and a Skeleton argument all documents have to be sent to [email protected].
  • If you do not wish for the matter to proceed solely on the basis of papers provided then you must contact the Court in writing ([email protected]) as soon as possible detailing the reasons why the case should not proceed in this manner.
  • Regardless of the option, you choose you will be expected on the date of your Case Management Review to be available at the allocated time for 5 minutes in order for the matter to be discussed unless told otherwise by the Court if you have requested for your case to be heard orally.

Should you have any Immigration queries, please contact our Immigration Team on 01206 835270 or [email protected] for more information about what service we can offer you. For more on Immigration and Visa Expiry queries during the Coronavirus pandemic, visit our Coronavirus Legal Advice hub.