[2025] UKUT 00276 (IAC)

With respect, we cannot see how a lawful decision could be reached that “the BRP is a valid grant of leave” (FTT, para 27) when the essential legislative prerequisite for valid issue is absent. The appeal test here is not a rationality one. The status of the BRP is a hard-edged question of law.

At most, a BRP can only be, as the Court of Appeal stated in Palestinian Territories, evidence of a grant of leave. But where there is no or no valid grant of leave, the BRP is evidence of nothing except the fact of its erroneous issue.

We find that the First-tier Tribunal‘s decision that the BRP was a grant of leave, such that the appeal fell to be treated as abandoned under section 104(4A) of the NIAA 2002, was a material error of law.