EEA Family Permit Refusal Appeal: Inside a Six-Year UK Case

An EEA family permit refusal can be appealed before the UK immigration tribunal, but one family’s case shows that without a properly assembled evidence bundle and a single joint appeal, the process can stretch into years instead of months.

In short

• An unqualified agent split one family appeal into five separate cases — leading to three different refusals
• None of the three judges ever received an appeal bundle: the agent never prepared the witness statements or the family’s legal argument
• The sponsor only discovered the failure in October 2023 — after nearly two years of the agent’s inaction
• In February 2024, the tribunal set aside three decisions and ordered a de novo rehearing before a single judge
• The decisive factor in winning was proof of essential living needs — the inability to cover basic costs without the sponsor’s support, despite having some income of their own

How it started: the application and the EEA family permit refusal

The application for an EEA family permit was submitted on 28 December 2020 — by several members of the same family at once. The basis was their relationship to a sponsor, a citizen of a European country who at the time lived in the UK and was exercising treaty rights there. The application included the sponsor’s brother with his wife and children, as well as another sister with her children — several applicants in total, all claimed as dependants of the same sponsor.

On 9 April 2021, the entry clearance officer refused every single application submitted. Neither the brother’s family nor the sister’s family received permission to enter.

Why separate appeals instead of one family appeal became the first mistake

In May 2021, appeals against the refusals were lodged by an agent who was assisting the family — not a solicitor or a registered immigration adviser, but someone without professional qualifications. Since this was a single family, the appeals should have been filed as one joint family case, bringing all the applicants together in a single set of proceedings.

The agent did the opposite: he filed separate appeals for the father, the mother, and each of the children. As a result, the courts ended up handling five separate appeals from one family instead of a single linked case.

The consequences showed up by winter. In December 2021, the brother’s appeal was dismissed; a few days later, so was his wife’s; and in January 2022, so was one of the children’s. The cases were heard by three different judges, each ruling independently, without seeing the full picture of the family’s case.

The appeal bundle: why its absence collapsed the case

None of the three judges who heard the case separately ever received an appeal bundle — the package of appeal materials without which a judge cannot see the applicant’s evidence. The agent assisting the family simply never prepared it.

The agent assisting the family simply never prepared it.

A proper bundle includes witness statements, skeleton arguments (a concise summary of the legal position) and supporting evidence — the agent submitted none of this. For a judge, this typically means that the appealing side has effectively failed to put forward its case: a decision can be made without the arguments and proof the family was relying on.

Meanwhile, the sponsor kept contacting the agent to ask about progress and was repeatedly assured that everything was under control. As later events showed, this was not true: while the agent did nothing, the case was quietly heading toward three separate refusals.

How new lawyers uncovered the agent’s failure and reopened the case

In October 2023 — almost two years into the wait — the sponsor consulted new lawyers, telling them the family’s appeals were still pending. That timeline did not fit normal practice: even allowing for delays, an appeal cannot drag on that long with no movement at all. The new lawyers filed notices of acting with the tribunal and requested the case files to understand what had actually happened.

In November 2023, it emerged that the family was in a serious procedural mess: each family member had received a different ruling from a different judge. For some of the cases, the right to appeal had already been exhausted — the tribunals had treated those cases as concluded. The scheduled hearing was converted into a case management hearing, and the judge ordered the immigration service to disclose every document it held: refusal letters, appeal materials, all of it.

At the next hearing in December 2023, the lawyers were handed the earlier judges’ decisions — confirming that no proper case documentation had ever been filed and that nothing had genuinely moved forward. For the three dismissed appeals — refused back in December 2021 and January 2022 — the lawyers applied for permission to appeal out of time, meaning after the normal deadline had passed. The next hearing was also set for December 2023.

Three decisions set aside and the appeals remade de novo

In January 2024, the tribunal allowed one family member’s appeal — this time the sponsor’s documentation had been submitted correctly. The decision confirmed that, as of 28 December 2020, the sponsor had been exercising treaty rights in the UK and the family members had been his dependants. A second appeal was won shortly after — bringing the total to two of the original five appeals allowed.

Three appeals remained: the ones dismissed back in December 2021, the same cases that had been heard separately with no appeal bundle. In February 2024, those cases turned around: a judge set aside all three decisions, finding that the cases had never been properly presented in the first place and that the applicants’ evidence had never actually reached the tribunal.

a judge set aside all three decisions, finding that the cases had never been properly presented in the first place and that the applicants’ evidence had never actually reached the tribunal

There was an additional reason for setting the decisions aside — the three rulings contradicted one another: three different judges, looking at the same facts and the same family members, had reached different conclusions. A set of rulings like that was found unsafe to rely on.

Rather than simply reviewing each case on its own, the tribunal ordered all three appeals to be reheard de novo — that is, completely afresh, with no reliance on the earlier materials or findings. The three cases were joined into a single set of proceedings and assigned to one immigration judge, who was to issue a single decision covering all three at once.

The final hearing in 2026: how the case was won after six years

From February 2024, once the tribunal ordered the de novo rehearing, the lawyers set about gathering documentation and pressing the tribunal for a new hearing date. After repeated requests, permission was granted in January 2025 and the appeals were remitted back to the First-tier Tribunal. In June 2025, the tribunal issued a case management order, and the hearing was listed at Taylor House in London.

For the hearing, a substantial bundle was prepared — around 500 pages: full witness statements, the sponsor’s evidence, a detailed breakdown of monthly income and expenses, and records of money transfers going back several years. The hearing itself took place in April 2026 at Taylor House, and in September 2026, all of the appeals were allowed.

The decisive factor in winning was proof of financial dependency: under EU rules, family members must be unable to cover their essential living needs without the sponsor’s support. The relatives did have some income of their own, but it wasn’t enough — it was precisely their inability to cover essential living needs on their own, despite having a salary, that formed the basis for allowing the appeal.

it was precisely their inability to cover essential living needs on their own, despite having a salary, that formed the basis for allowing the appeal

Frequently asked questions

Can you hire an agent instead of a solicitor to file an EEA family permit appeal?

This case shows the risks of that choice: an unqualified agent filed five separate appeals instead of one joint family appeal and never prepared an appeal bundle, costing the family nearly three years, with three decisions later having to be set aside. A qualified solicitor or registered immigration adviser is bound by procedural requirements the agent ignored.

Can the situation be fixed if an appeal has already been dismissed and the deadline to appeal has passed?

Yes — in this case, for the three appeals dismissed back in 2021–2022, the new lawyers applied for permission to appeal out of time, meaning after the normal deadline, and the tribunal accepted the applications for consideration. This isn’t a guarantee, but it shows that missing a deadline doesn’t always close a case for good if there are strong procedural grounds.

What happens if different judges issue contradictory rulings in the same family case?

In that situation, the set of rulings can be found unsafe to rely on going forward: that’s exactly what happened when three different judges, looking at the same facts and the same family members, reached different conclusions. The outcome was that all three decisions were set aside and the case was reheard from scratch by a single judge.

How long can an EEA family permit refusal appeal actually take?

There’s no fixed timeframe, and this case is a vivid illustration of how long the process can drag on when procedural failures pile up: from the first application in December 2020 to the final decision in September 2026, almost six years passed, nearly two of which were lost to an agent who never prepared the paperwork.

Can you check whether your appeal is actually progressing while it’s pending?

In this case, the sponsor kept contacting the agent and was repeatedly assured everything was under control, even though the case wasn’t moving at all — the real picture only came to light once new lawyers got involved, filed notices of acting with the tribunal, and requested the case files. It’s worth independently checking the status of a case with the tribunal, or through a new representative, if answers keep being vague with no concrete steps to point to.

What income counts as enough to stop a family member from being recognised as the sponsor’s dependant?

There’s no fixed figure under EU rules — the test is qualitative: a dependant must be unable to cover their essential living needs without the sponsor’s support. In this case, the relatives had their own salaries, but the tribunal found that income insufficient to cover their basic living needs, and that was precisely what formed the basis for allowing the appeal.

What happens if a tribunal orders appeals to be reheard de novo?

It means the case is heard completely afresh, with no reliance on the earlier materials or the previous judges’ findings. In this case, three appeals were joined into a single set of proceedings and assigned to one judge, who was to issue a single decision covering all three at once — this made it possible to resolve the contradictions between the earlier separate rulings.