AC-2025-LON-003557 - [2025] EWHC 2687 (Admin)

In this case a claim for judicial review with urgent consideration of the question of interim relief was first notified to the Court at 16:38 on Wednesday 15 October 2025. A rule-compliant claim bundle was filed at 17:00. The bundle ran to 193 pages. The Form N463 recorded that it had first been appreciated that an urgent application might be necessary at 09:00 on 14 October 2025. By Form N463, this is what the Court was being asked to do. To deal with the application for interim relief within two hours, and in doing so to make an order for an interim injunction on the papers to restrain the removal of the Claimant to France. This proposed removal was pursuant to the UK-France Agreement. The legal background is identified in R (CTK) v SSHD [2025] EWCA Civ 1264.

The SSHD had declared the Claimant’s asylum claim to be inadmissible, pursuant to s.80B of the Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. The SSHD had also certified as clearly unfounded the Claimant’s human rights claims, pursuant to Sch 3 Part 2 §5 to the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc) Act 2004. The date of those decisions was 7 October 2025. Removal directions – for a removal to France on Thursday 16 October 2025 – had also been served on 7 October 2025. The claim papers said that Counsel had first been instructed on 8 October 2025.

This case was one of two urgent cases which were allocated to me, with access to the case papers, at 18:31 on Wednesday 15 October 2025. The other case was R (CSG) v SSHD, in which my judgment is [2025] EWHC 2688 (Admin). I dealt with them in parallel, then in sequence. The Court understood that the scheduled flight to France was due to take off at 07:45 on Thursday 16 October 2025. I decided to convene an urgent oral hearing by MS Teams later in the evening. I was told that GLD had not been aware of this case. In any event, they speedily instructed Counsel (Ms Reid). She and the Claimant’s Counsel (Ms King) were on standby and waited patiently. I had set about reading key documents, to try to identify the nature and thrust of the legal challenge, and the case for interim relief, in both the present case and the other urgent case.