Mr L complained that because of a delay of more than two years in UKVI reaching a decision, he could not travel outside the UK or get the work experience he needed to qualify as an electrician.
What happened
Mr L first came to the UK with his brothers and sisters in 1998, when he was aged eleven, to visit their grandmother. UKVI refused their application to enter the UK, but gave them permission to stay on a temporary basis.
Mr L's mother then applied for the whole family to stay permanently in the UK on the basis that she was married to a British citizen, but UKVI refused her application. Eventually her appeal rights were exhausted, and in spring 2007 UKVI decided to remove the whole family from the UK.
In spring 2010 Mr L applied to UKVI for permission to stay in his own right, and later that year it granted him permission to stay for six months on the basis of his family life in the UK. In spring 2011, Mr L applied to extend his leave. He should have applied on a specified form and paid a fee. However, because he could not afford the fee, he applied on an incorrect form that only applied to people who had sought asylum or humanitarian protection. This type of application was free.
When UKVI received the form, it did not check it and sent it to a team dealing with a backlog of 'legacy' asylum and migration cases. In late summer 2013 UKVI processed the application and granted Mr L permission to stay in the UK for 30 months.
What we found
It was not part of UKVI's process to carry out initial checks of cases, and when it received Mr L's application, it placed it in the queue without checking whether it was correct for it to deal with. It was not.
UKVI would have known that cases placed in its 'legacy' backlog were likely to stay there for long periods, and we found it was unfair to customers to add cases to a backlog that should not be there. Its failure to have a process for checking cases was maladministration. And even when Mr L's representatives threatened legal action in late 2012, UKVI did not identify that the application had been incorrectly made. It also failed to meet a commitment to reach a decision within six months.
Also, UKVI should not have processed Mr L's application because he did not make it on the correct form and it was therefore invalid.
We could not look at the effects of Mr L's mistakes without considering what had caused them. Mr L had knowingly applied using the wrong form in order to avoid paying the fee. Whilst UKVI should have returned his application as invalid, this might have meant that he did not make an application at all. It was because of UKVI's mistakes that he achieved what he wanted ‑ avoiding paying a fee.
Although this did not excuse UKVI's mistakes, we could not say that Mr L suffered an injustice as a result of it processing his application. The only injustice to him was that he had to wait longer than he should have done to get a decision.
We partly upheld the complaint.
Putting it right
UKVI apologised to Mr L for the delay in dealing with his application, which was caused by its maladministration. As UKVI now carries out initial checks of applications, we did not need to make a recommendation to stop what happened in Mr L's case happening again.
UK Visas and Immigration
UK
Not applicable
Apology