The High Court refused to extend the time limit for a Somali applicant and two family members seeking leave to challenge decisions rejecting their asylum claims. The court said their application was out of time and therefore refused leave for judicial review.
Mr Justice Cooke delivered the judgment on 6 May 2009. The applicant had sought to quash a 2004 report and recommendation by the Refugee Applications Commissioner and a March 2005 appeal decision by the Refugee Appeals Tribunal. The Commissioner had rejected the claims on credibility grounds. The judicial review proceedings began in October 2007, more than two and a half years after the Tribunal decision.
In March 2009, the applicant asked to add her daughter and nephew as applicants and amend the grounds. The court granted joinder, noting that all three had been included in the asylum application and were affected by the decisions under challenge. It considered that the additional grounds concerning the nephew’s age were unlikely, by themselves, to provide substantial grounds for relief.
The court then considered whether there was good and sufficient reason to extend the statutory time limit. The applicant said she had wanted to challenge the Tribunal decision but could not afford judicial review. Her former solicitor instead wrote to the Tribunal seeking a rehearing. After that solicitor ceased practice, the applicant later sought help from the Refugee Legal Service, which asked the Minister in August 2006 to readmit her to the asylum process. A new solicitor began acting for her in 2007.
The judge accepted that the applicant was dissatisfied with the Tribunal decision and that potential flaws had been identified soon after it was issued. But the applicant and her lawyers had chosen alternative routes—first asking for a new hearing, then seeking readmission—rather than bringing judicial review. The court held that this choice did not explain or excuse the delay. It also found insufficient evidence of prompt efforts to pursue a challenge after the former solicitor stopped acting.
The daughter and nephew relied on the same explanation and offered no distinct reason for their own delay in seeking to join the case. The judge noted that neither had taken steps to seek separate consideration of their asylum claims before moving to join the proceedings in March 2009.
The court refused extensions of time for challenges to both the Tribunal decision and the Commissioner’s report. The application for leave to seek judicial review therefore failed as out of time. The judgment did not decide the substantive legality of the asylum decisions.