AC-2025-LON-003558 - [2025] EWHC 2688 (Admin)

To understand this case it is helpful to give an outline of the following sequence of events. The Claimant arrived in the UK in a small boat from France. He had an asylum screening interview at 01:51 on the morning of 25 August 2025. At 09:25 on 26 August 2025 he had his induction interview at the immigration detention centre. At 17:13 on 28 August 2025 an online form was submitted by the first responder within the Home Office by way of an NRM referral. NRM is the national referral mechanism. The terminology and applicable instruments and policies are discussed in CTK. The key point which arises, for parallel decision-making within the Home Office, is whether there are reasonable grounds to conclude that the individual is a victim of modern slavery. If so, duties are triggered. And in all this, anxious scrutiny is applicable on judicial review.

On 3 September 2025 an adverse reasonable grounds decision was made by the relevant competent authority, for reasons set out in a decision letter which also communicated the Claimant’s right to request a reconsideration. On 7 September 2025 the Claimant was given a medical examination culminating in a rule 35 report. Reports of that kind arise in particular because of questions about suitability of ongoing detention, but they can have wider significance. On 1 October 2025, the Claimant sent an email requesting reconsideration of the negative reasonable grounds decision, and making a series of points. On 2 October 2025 his then solicitors wrote a follow-up letter requesting reconsideration on his behalf. The Home Office guidance documents describe the right of reconsideration. Mr Lee quoted a passage from policy guidance describing the “pause” in inadmissibility action while the process is still underway (“until the consideration of whether or not the person is a victim of modern slavery has been completed”). The document itself was not included within the 599 pages provided to the Court. The contents of the policy guidance, and their applicability to the present case, were not contested for the purposes of what I had to decide. In the CTK case the SSHD had confirmed to the High Court that, if the claimant in that case were removed, the NRM competent authority would not deal with reconsideration or receive any further evidence: see the judgment of the Court of Appeal at §1.

On 6 October 2025 a decision letter was issued which declined the Claimant’s request for a reconsideration. That adverse decision was the central focus of the judicial review claim. Mr Lee called it a gateway decision, made by a gatekeeper who was declining to open the gate. The body of that decision document confirms that the decision-maker had the Claimant’s email request (1.10.25), the rule 35 report (7.9.25) and the solicitors’ request letter (2.10.25). Following the negative reconsideration decision of 6 October 2025, the SSHD’s inadmissibility decision and notice of intent were issued on 7 October 2025. Then on 8 October 2025 came the removal directions, immigration factual summary and assertive letter. The Claimant was due under the removal directions to be removed to France on 16 October 2025. The SSHD’s position was that the NRM decision-making had reached its end (had “been completed”).