Last updated: 22 October 2024

Receiving a refusal from the Home Office

When you receive a refusal decision from the Home Office on your immigration application, it will be in the form of a letter. This is called a Reasons for Refusal Letter (RFRL). 

The letter may be emailed to your lawyer if you have one, or to you directly. If you receive a refusal on your case from the Home Office by post, keep the envelope. You may need to prove when it was posted, and the actual day you received it. Write the date you received it next to the postmark.

Go through every paragraph of the refusal letter and write comments.

For example, are there factual errors in the Home Office decision? Have they got information about you wrong? Have important parts of your application been overlooked? This may be relevant to an appeal or administrative review.

It is possible that the Home Office followed the wrong procedure or rules when they made their decision about your application. You may need a lawyer to identify this for you.

The right to appeal

If your application has been refused, you may have the right to appeal the decision. This means you will appeal to the First-Tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber).

There is currently only the right of appeal within the UK if the Home Office refuse an application based on:

• a human rights claim (such as Article 8)
• an international protection claim
• a decision to revoke Refugee Status or Humanitarian Protection, or
• a decision on an EU Settled Status application made after 31 January 2020.

Not all applications based on human rights or international protection have a right of appeal. Read more on the Appeals page of this guide, and on the Home Office website here.

For example, you do not have the right of appeal in the UK if your asylum or human rights claim is certified by the Home Office because they think it is “clearly unfounded”.

If you are making a human rights claim when you are facing deportation after a criminal sentence, the Home Office may certify the claim unless you can show that “serious and irreversible harm” would occur if you had to appeal outside of the UK. The Home Office is less likely to certify your claim if you have a child who is a British citizen. Read more on the Deportation page of this guide.

If your claim is certified, you may be able to appeal the negative decision on your application from outside of the UK. It may also be possible to challenge the certification of your claim through a judicial review. Read more on the Judicial Reviews page of this guide.

If you made your application before 6 April 2015 there is a different process to appeal. See the Home Office website for more information on the old process.

Appeal deadline

You have 14 days from the date the decision was sent to lodge an appeal with the First-tier Tribunal. 

The quickest way to submit an application for appeal is online. To apply you will need your Home Office reference number (from your decision letter), supporting documents if you have them, and an email address and phone number.

If you have missed the deadline, and over 14 days have passed since your decision letter was sent, you can still apply to the Tribunal. You must give reasons for why you missed the deadline. 
For a detailed guide to submitting an appeal application online, see here.

Administrative review

If your immigration application is refused and you do not have the right to appeal the decision, you may be able to apply for administrative review. This is where you apply to the Home Office to internally review the decision it has made. This means you are asking the Home Office – not a court – to review its own decision. The review will be carried out by someone other than the original decision maker on the case, and there is no oral hearing. It is different from an appeal, which is decided by an independent judge. 

Not everyone will have the right to ask for an administrative review. People applying for visitor visas, for example, do not have the right to review. Nor do family members applying for the right to stay under the Family Migration immigration rules. You can also no longer apply for an administrative review of an application to the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS). Your refusal letter will tell you if you have the right to apply for an administrative review, and will tell you how to apply.

You can apply for administrative review in some circumstances even if you are granted leave to remain, but are not happy with the length of leave given or the conditions imposed on your leave.

Administrative review is available if the error you believe the Home Office has made could have made a difference to the decision, or because the decision may impact a future application you make. It can be used to resolve “case-working errors” on a number of grounds – for example, if the decision maker made a mistake when calculating a period of leave. See the Home Office guidance for more information on types of case-working errors.

If you are already in the UK, you need to apply for an administrative review within 14 days of getting the decision, or 7 days if you are detained.

It costs £80. This will be refunded if you are successful in overturning the decision through the review. 

For information on administrative reviews if you are applying from outside of the UK, see the Home Office website.

No new evidence can be submitted when applying for an administrative review, apart from certain circumstances when you are providing new evidence to demonstrate a case-working error in the Home Office decision. In any case, you may be asked at a later date to send new information or documents. 

In most cases, you should not be removed from the UK until your administrative review has been completed. However, if you ask for a review but the Home Office position is that its outcome would not make a difference to the decision to remove/deport you, a review will not prevent removal taking place. This includes if you are facing automatic deportation or your case is a national security case.You can’t request a second review, unless the result of your first administrative review included new reasons for why you were refused. If the review doesn’t result in you being granted leave to remain (or a change to the time period or conditions of your leave, if that was what you have requested to be reviewed), you may be able to apply for judicial review of the administrative review decision. Read more on the Judicial Reviews page of this guide.

Make a new application

After a Home Office refusal (especially if you do not have the right to appeal or review), your best option may be to make a new application. This means submitting a new application form with new evidence and – if there is a fee for your application – paying a new fee. 

This is only likely to be successful if you are able to fix the things that led to the first refusal.

You are likely to need evidence to support the application. 

Look carefully through the Home Office refusal and identify the basis on which your application was refused. Has the Home Office said you don’t meet the standards of immigration rules? Or was there a problem with how the application was made (for example, if you didn’t pay the application fee)?

If you do not meet the rules, and there is no discretion (this means option to decide) to approve your application outside of the rules, there may not be any point in making a new application. If possible, you should get legal advice about this.If you know you do meet the rules but were not able to prove this, or the Home Office was not satisfied with the evidence you submitted, think about how you could get more convincing evidence.