Mrs N's application for a residence card as the spouse of a European Economic Area citizen
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Background to the complaint
In February 2006 Mrs N (a Romanian national) entered the UK on a visitor’s visa. In August she applied for a residence card on the basis that she was the spouse of a Dutch national employed in the UK. (A residence card confirms that person’s right of residence in the UK under European law.) She also supplied evidence of her husband’s identity, nationality and employment, as well as a copy of their marriage certificate.
The UK Border Agency (the Agency) contacted Mr N’s employer and found out that his employment had ended in August 2006. In November the Agency wrote to ask Mrs N for evidence that her husband was still employed in the UK. They incorrectly wrote to the main address on Mrs N’s application form and not the return address she had given. Mrs N was in the process of moving house at the time, and did not receive the Agency’s letter. Having received no reply to their letter, the Agency refused Mrs N’s application in January 2007 on the basis that they could not be satisfied that her husband was exercising his right to work in the UK.
Mrs N immediately wrote to ask the Agency to reconsider their decision to refuse her a residence card, and enclosed evidence that her husband had a new employer. The Agency should have treated Mrs N’s letter as a reconsideration request and made a fresh decision within one month. Instead, they forwarded Mrs N’s file to the removals unit. No further action was taken on the case until May 2007, when the removals unit wrote to Mrs N at her old address. This letter – which said that Romania had become a member of the European Union on 1 January 2007 and that Mrs N was no longer subject to immigration control – was returned to the Agency marked ‘not known at this address’. They then put Mrs N’s file into storage and took no further action. In July Mrs N emailed the Agency to ask them to progress her case. They treated this letter as a complaint and passed it to the relevant business area. However, the email was never linked to Mrs N’s file and she did not receive a substantive response.
What our investigation found
Mrs N’s application for a residence card was subject to a catalogue of errors by the Agency. They wrote to her at the wrong address, failed to identify her letter of January 2007 as an appeal, and incorrectly sent her file to the removals unit, where it was incorrectly put into storage. They also failed to respond to the substance of Mrs N’s complaint about their handling of her case and so missed the opportunity to put right their earlier mistakes. These errors amounted to maladministration.
The injustice to Mrs N
The delay in receiving Mrs N’s residence card caused her problems once she moved home and delayed her applying for new employment. While we had no basis for saying that the maladministration led to actual financial loss, the Agency’s mistakes did cause Mrs N inconvenience and uncertainty, and their failure to respond to her complaint compounded her sense of hopelessness in her dealings with them.
How we resolved the complaint
We upheld Mrs N’s complaint. The Agency agreed that they had mishandled her case. They accepted that it was likely that she would have supplied the information they had asked for in November 2006, and were satisfied that she would have qualified for the residence card at that time. The Agency decided Mrs N’s residence card application, and sent her card to her in April 2008. They apologised to Mrs N for their mishandling of her case, and made her a consolatory payment of £300. We considered that those actions fully remedied the injustice to Mrs N.
