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Reason for the delay
Reason for the delay
Mr Rahman’s evidence was that:
he was uncertain of the process for challenging the Original Decision and had used the internet to find information and to download a form to send to DBF;
he had contacted DBF by email in the first two weeks after 17 March 2023 and had then written a letter to DBF (using the form downloaded from the internet) at some point in the period between 17 March and 30 July 2023;
he did not have copies of that email or letter, having lost access to the email account from which he had sent the email and not having taken a copy of the letter;
he had not received a reply to his email of 30 July 2023 and he not taken further steps to pursue the matter until he was travelling through Gatwick in November 2023, at which point he had sought advice in person;
in consequence of that advice he had written to BF on 28 March 2024 – he had not done so between November 2023 and March 2024 because he was abroad with limited access to his emails.
There are suggestions in the written evidence that Mr Rahman attempted to contact DBF before 30 July 2023. For example the 30 July email refers to Mr Rahman having “tried the relevant way of dealing with this matter but to no avail..”; and the 28 March 2024 letter states “… I initially contacted the complaints department twice via email and post when I was first charged …”.
On the other hand, the notice of appeal states “I initially wrote to Gatwick border force and completed the appropriate form I was advised to do so by the officers to make my appeal. This letter was sent by post. I waited for a response and then made contact again”. This suggests that rather than needing to download a form from the internet, Mr Rahman was given a form at Gatwick airport to complete in order to make an appeal.
We considered that Mr Rahman was trying to present his honest recollections of the events and the correspondence he had sent to DBF, but that with the passage of time his recollections are not clear enough for us to be able to find any facts as to what contact and when he had with DBF in the period 17 March 2023 and 30 July 2023. For the requirements of s14(2) to be met, Mr Rahman would have had to give a notice requiring a review within the 45 day period; we did not have sufficient evidence to be able to find that that had happened. Even the 30 July 2023 email was not a completely clear notice for the purpose of s14(2) since it states “I believe the tax was wrongly imposed, can you help me to resolve this or show me where I can appeal this matter”; that could be read as a request for advice on what steps to take in order to challenge the decision rather than being a formal request for a review of the decision for the purposes of s14(2). On balance we think the 30 July 2023 e-mail should be treated as a request for a review for the purposes of s14(2), but the lack of clarity of the wording in this e-mail is indicative that any correspondence Mr Rahman may have sent before 30 July 2023 might well not have amounted to a request for the purposes of s14(2).
In any event, for the purposes of the Martland test, our summary of the reason for the delay between 17 March 2023 and 30 July 2023 was that Mr Rahman was probably thinking about what to do and may have sent some correspondence to DBF but it was not clear to us what may have been sent or when.
If we were considering the delay between 17 March 2023 and 28 March 2024, our summary of the reason for the delay was that Mr Rahman was travelling and/or busy with other matters to the effect that pursuing a challenge to the Original Decision was not at the top of his agenda.