High Court quashes irrational negative Reasonable Grounds decision and affirms importance of anxious scrutiny review

The High Court has found that the Home Office made an unlawful Reasonable Grounds decision, rejecting the Claimant’s trafficking claim, and maintained that decision in an unlawful refusal to reconsider.

The judgment also helpfully affirms the importance of anxious scrutiny on the intensity of review, and its interaction with the need for high quality reasoning in trafficking decisions [§§27-29].

The Claimant provided what the Competent Authority found was a “consistent,” account of having been trafficked in Libya, a “red-flag” country for modern slavery, but nonetheless found there was insufficient evidence to reach the low Reasonable Grounds threshold.

Mr Justice Fordham found four errors in the negative Reasonable Grounds decision:

1. It was said the Home Office First Responder did not identify any indicators of modern slavery within the Claimant’s account, even though the decision maker was able to identify that all three constitutive elements for the trafficking definition (action, means, purpose) were present on that very account. Applying the Statutory Guidance, there were, in fact, numerous general, situational / environmental and forced labour indicators present on the Claimant’s account [§35, §11];
2. The decision maker irrationally found there was a lack of detail in the Claimant’s account, but did not specify what was actually lacking [§37];
3. The decision maker adopted an irrational approach as to the need for supporting evidence: the decision left the matter hanging, by using unclear language as to whether the fact exploitation took place abroad impacted the availability of supporting evidence [§§39-40];
4. The decision maker relied upon the timing of the disclosure of trafficking, as being adverse to the Claimant, which was not borne out by the evidence. Even so, whilst the First Responder may have doubted the Claimant’s credibility because of timing, this did not reflect the inquiry at the Reasonable Grounds stage [§44].

The SSHD accepted that the subsequent refusal to reconsider could not stand if the underlying decision was irrational [§50]. The Court also rejected the SSHD’s submission that an expert report obtained by the Claimant’s solicitors for the purposes of reconsideration was immaterial or improper in its contribution [§51].

Read the full judgment here: R (Al Noor) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWHC 922 (Admin)

The Claimant was represented by Emma Fitzsimons, of the Garden Court Immigration and Public Law Teams. To find out more about Emma’s practice please click here.