Case No. UKUT-00222-(IAC)

[2014] EWHC 2603 (Admin), to which I will return, and traced the development of the fee waiver guidance from the date of that decision. It was accepted that the applicants were not destitute. It was submitted that they would become destitute if required to pay the fee or, in the alternative, that they met the third limb of the respondent’s test, which was described as ‘exceptional circumstances … that justify the grant of a fee waiver’. The applicants’ financial circumstances were evaluated at length and it was submitted, in summary, that no reasonable Secretary of State could have concluded that the ‘exceptional circumstances’ limb of the policy did not apply. It was also submitted that the decision was contrary to the respondent’s obligations under section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009. 22. On 26 February 2019, the respondent responded to the Letter Before Action, stating that the decision under challenge would be maintained. She did not accept that the guidance had been applied incorrectly; that she had failed to consider the applicants’ circumstances as a whole; or that the decision breached section 55.