How to Submit an Immigration Appeal – Part 1: Notice of Appeal

Has your visa application been refused? Do you think the Home Office refused wrongly? Do you need to appeal the Home Office decision?

If you have received a refusal decision on your visa application then you may have been given a right of appeal. If you have, then you must submit a Notice of Appeal but please note that there is a deadline! If you are appealing from outside the UK then you have 28 days from the date of the decision letter to submit a notice of appeal. If you are appealing from inside the UK you have 14 days from the date of decision letter.

Notice of Appeal Stage

A Notice of Appeal can either be done by completing an online form or posting a paper form.

The forms are generally the same in terms of the questions they ask but the online form does mean your payment gets taken online and straightaway. On the paper form you would provide your card details and the court will take the payment as and when they deal with the appeal.

Additionally, if you are very close to the deadline to appeal then it is usually better to appeal online as the online submission would count as the date of submission. This also then gives you a bit of time to post the further documents as below.

The only other point to note is that with the online form you will still need to post the form, cover sheet, grounds and refusal letter to the court.

What to send with the Notice of Appeal?

1. Cover sheet (with online appeal only)
2. Appeal form
3. Grounds of Appeal
4. Refusal letter
5. If you are applying for an extension of time to submit the appeal then any supporting evidence of the same

Once the court has received the Notice of Appeal, they will process the appeal and set a date for your appeal hearing at the Immigration Tribunal. This can take few months to come through and sometimes you may have a hearing date but it may be a few months in advance.

In my next blog I talk about the next stage of an appeal, which is usually once you receive a hearing date and need to start preparing a bundle to send to the Tribunal and Home Office. If you wish to read Part 2 of this Blog then please click here.

If you have been refused a visa and wish to start the appeal process then please contact Ami for assistance.