Administrative Review

An immigration administrative review is a legal process by which an individual (i.e., the visa applicant) may challenge the decision made by a public body (i.e., the Home Office) regarding their concerned application.

The primary goal of having this process in place is to reduce the number of appeals made in a court of law against a visa refusal/rejection decision. It saves time and cost for both parties involved (i.e., the applicant and the Home Office) where the refusal is a result of a mere factual or procedural error, or an incorrect interpretation of the UK Immigration Rules.

The administrative review process is primarily governed by Appendix AR of the Immigration Rules. In case of certain overseas applications, Appendix ARA applies together with associated Home Office guidance. While conducting an administrative review process, the Home Office caseworker will not reconsider the whole case. Instead, they will focus on correcting the case working error(s) that occurred originally, e.g., procedural mistakes or a misapplication of immigration rules or guidance.

Not every immigration decision by the Home Office is open for an administrative review though. You can ask for a review only if you have sufficient reason(s) to believe that the Home Office made case working error(s) while arriving at the visa refusal/rejection decision. Plus, certain visa types are not eligible for an administrative review. You will be eligible to ask for an administrative review only if it is mentioned in your decision letter.

Page Content

• What is Administrative Review?
• Administrative Review Vs Right to Appeal
• Who Can Apply for Administrative Review?
• Common Visa Categories Eligible for Administrative Review
• Reasons to Apply for Administrative Review
• Ask for a Visa Administrative Review
• Evidence Required for Administrative Review
• Step-by-step Administrative Review Process
• How Long Does an Administrative Review Take?
• Administrative Review Fee
• What Happens After the Review?
• How Manchester Immigration Lawyers Can Help You
• Frequently Asked Questions

Before we delve further into the administrative review process, we must understand how an administrative review differs from the right to appeal a visa decision.

Here are the main differences between the two processes:

Whether or not you have a right to appeal against the Home Office decision will be mentioned in your decision letter. Note that in certain scenarios, requesting for an administrative review can be a prerequisite to appealing to an immigration tribunal.

You cannot ask for an administrative review in every visa refusal situation. UK Immigration Rules restrict the administrative review rights to specific immigration decisions and categories. Making a fresh visa application or taking the immigration judicial review route may be, in fact, the more appropriate option in certain scenarios.

Broadly speaking, eligibility for an administrative review depends on the Immigration Rules, the type of visa/immigration application, and if the Home Office refusal decision carries administrative review rights.

You will be eligible to ask for an administrative review in the UK provided:

• You applied for the visa from within the UK
• You are physically in the UK on a different visa
• Your entry clearance was:
  • Refused, or
  • Granted but you are unhappy with the leave period or associated conditions

You will be eligible to ask for an administrative review outside the UK provided:

• You applied for the visa from outside the UK
• You are physically outside the UK
• You received the Home Office refusal decision on or after 6 April 2015
• You do not have the right to appeal against the refusal
• You did not apply for a Short-term study visa or a Standard Visitor visa (excepting visit visas for receiving medical treatment in the UK)

You may also be eligible for an administrative review if your visa was cancelled at the UK border control due to one or more of the following reasons:

• Your circumstances have been changed since you have received your visa approval letter
• You failed to include relevant information while applying for your visa
• You gave false information

The UK’s points-based system makes certain immigration categories more common to be eligible for an administrative review compared to their non-points-based counterparts, such as:

• Skilled Worker visa (including Health and Care Worker visa)
• Student visa
• Scale-up Worker visa
• Graduate route visa
• Global Talent visa
• Temporary Worker route
• Certain settlement applications

Since in all these abovementioned scenarios the Home Office caseworker arrives at a visa decision based primarily on rules, the chances of a case working error affecting the visa decision are comparatively higher.

If you have genuine and sufficient reason(s) to believe that your Home Office caseworker has made an error that resulted in the refusal of your visa/immigration application, you can apply for an administrative review. You must identify at least one specific case working error affecting the decision, such as:

• An incorrect interpretation or misapplication of UK Immigration Rules
• A failure to consider submitted documentary proof
• Any factual inaccuracies
• A miscalculation of immigration points (i.e., for points-based visa categories)
• Any procedural errors
• A lack of evidential flexibility (i.e., if your caseworker should have requested you for further proof before refusing your visa application but failed to do so)

Typically, an administrative review is requested in the following scenarios:

• If the Home Office has refused your UK visa or immigration application
• If your leave to enter or remain in the UK has been cancelled at the border control
• If you are not satisfied with the period or conditions of leave you have been granted
• If you think there has been an error in your refusal decision under the Frontier Worker Permit Scheme, or if your Frontier Permit has been revoked

Once the Home Office receives your complete administrative review application, they will assign a caseworker to review the same. This will be a different person than the caseworker who initially reviewed your visa application and made the original refusal decision.

Your new caseworker will consider the ground(s) on which you are challenging the refusal decision, to determine whether the original refusal decision was legally and procedurally correct or not, based on the evidence available at the time of the decision.

There will not be any independent tribunal or court hearing. You will not get an opportunity to give oral evidence in person or through a lawyer. Plus, the Home Office will not conduct a full reassessment of your circumstances. The scope of the process is narrower, focusing solely on identifying the case working errors, if any.

It may take 12 months or more to receive the outcome of the administrative review. If your visa was cancelled at the UK border, you may get a decision within 28 days or more. It is not possible to ask for, or pay any additional fee to get, a faster review decision.

The Home Office will usually share an update with you in case you do not hear from them within six months. However, the processing delay will not affect your immigration rights in the UK, even if you are already overstaying in the country.

Your review request will be cancelled if you apply for any other UK visa while awaiting your review outcome, or ask for a review of a previous decision after submitting a new application. If you are already in the UK and ask the Home Office to return your passport so that you can travel abroad or leave the country, your review application will be rejected.

You can also withdraw your review application voluntarily by sending an email to the Home Office at this email address: administrative.reviews@homeoffice.gov.uk. Your application fee will not be refunded, however.

You will need to pay an administrative review application fee of £80 to apply for an administrative review. You may be exempt from paying this fee if you did not originally pay a visa processing fee (unless you applied for a Frontier Worker permit), or in exceptional circumstances when you cannot pay the fee.

The Home Office will give you a refund if the original refusal decision gets withdrawn due to a genuine error on their part (and not because of any new evidence you may have been allowed to submit), or if your review application is rejected as invalid.

Upon reviewing your application, if the Home Office finds that there was a genuine case working error (or more) while arriving at the original decision, your caseworker will assess and determine whether correcting the said error(s) would change the visa outcome. If so, you will receive a new, corrected decision, e.g., a visa approval, a change in the length or conditions of your leave, etc.

However, if the Home Office does not find a genuine case working error involved in its original decision after assessing your review application, they will send you a formal letter confirming that the original decision has been upheld.

You cannot appeal an administrative review decision, nor request a second review (unless the result of the first review found new reasons for refusal). Your decision letter will tell you if you can apply for a second review. You may, however, challenge the outcome of an administrative review through judicial review in certain cases.