Kavetuna, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

1. MR JUSTICE BURNETT: This is an application for judicial review of a decision of the Secretary of State to refuse the claimant leave to enter the United Kingdom on 10 January 2007. The claimant has not attended today and has indicated that she does not seek actively to pursue this application.

2. The circumstances can be very shortly stated.

3. On 3 January 2007 the claimant arrived from Windhoek in Namibia, where she had spent a few days over Christmas and the New Year visiting her family. She had been in the United Kingdom before that. Between 8 April 2004 and 8 April 2006, she had leave to remain in the United Kingdom. Thereafter, on about 9 November 2006 she was given six months' leave to remain for the purpose of obtaining private medical treatment. When she left the United Kingdom to go to Namibia that leave lapsed under the immigration rules because it was for six months or less.

4. When she returned in early January she appeared to be seeking leave for two allied, but different, purposes; first, for continued medical treatment. However, that medical treatment was expected to last for a period that took it outside of the provisions of the immigration rules. Secondly, she sought leave to enter to continue with a course of education. The circumstances there were such that her application was also outside the immigration rules. In fact it is clear that she had been undertaking educational courses in breach of her pre-existing leave. The way in which the application was put was that the Secretary of State had irrationally revoked her leave when she sought to reenter in early January 2007.

5. When the matter came before Calvert-Smith J he considered that the claim was arguable "... in the absence of any explanation why the leave to remain till May 2007 was revoked." Although that permission was granted on 17 April 2007, some three weeks after the defendant had filed an acknowledgment of service setting out in detail the circumstances, it is clear from the note of permission being granted that the acknowledgment of service was not before Calvert-Smith J. This claim has proceeded on a misunderstanding on the part of the claimant and her advisers to the effect that her leave to remain was revoked. It was not. It is quite clear that, on the facts that presented themselves to the immigration officer, when the claimant returned to the United Kingdom on 3 January, the facts being further explored on 10 January 2007, that his decision was not only rational but inevitable.

6. In those circumstances this application for judicial review is dismissed.

7. There is an application for costs which I will assess at £500. So the order is that this claim for judicial review is dismissed; and the claimant will pay the defendant's costs assessed at £500.