Mrs L's application as the spouse of a UK citizen
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Background to the complaint
Before meeting Mrs L, Mr L was charged with (and later convicted of) bigamy in 2001.
Mr and Mrs L married in 2004 and in July 2005 Mrs L applied for a spouse settlement visa, which was granted.
In July 2007 Mrs L applied to the UK Border Agency (the Agency), at a ‘same-day’ priority appointment, for indefinite leave to remain in the UK on the basis of her marriage to Mr L. She paid £950 for this service. At the appointment, the Agency noted that Mr L had been linked to another immigration application (that of his second wife) for leave to remain on the basis of her marriage to Mr L (for which he had been convicted of bigamy), and decided to refer Mrs L’s case to the ‘marriage’ team for further consideration. The Agency told Mrs L that they aimed to complete her application within 13 weeks. Having heard nothing about her application, Mrs L contacted the Agency a number of times to try and find out what was happening. In December the Agency wrote to Mrs L apologising that they had not met their target timescales for processing her application because further enquiries were being made. In February 2008 the Agency decided that Mrs L’s application would need to go for a ‘marriage interview’ because of the bigamy charge. Her file was then put in the backlog of cases awaiting a marriage interview.
In July 2008 the Agency told Mrs L that they would decide her application as soon as they had further documentary evidence to show that Mr and Mrs L had been cohabiting since their entry to the UK. They said that the evidence they had previously submitted was insufficient. Mrs L replied saying that she had taken 48 supporting documents to the priority appointment, but the caseworker had chosen only some of them. She enclosed 27 documents and the decree absolute for Mr L’s marriage to his first wife, which was finalised after the date of Mr L’s void marriage to his second wife. The Agency granted Mrs L indefinite leave to remain the day after receiving these documents.
What our investigation found
Mrs L’s application was not straightforward, so while it would have been good customer service if the Agency had told her much sooner that they were unlikely to be able to meet their service standards in her case, their failure to do so did not amount to maladministration. The Agency did, however, take six months to link the files related to Mrs L’s case and delayed deciding whether a marriage interview was necessary. They failed to plan adequately when transferring responsibility internally within the Agency for marriage interviews – the department that was due to take on this work was unable to arrange the necessary training as quickly as it had hoped, which meant that the suspension was much longer than intended. We also found that the Agency neither managed Mrs L’s expectations about the length of time they were likely to take to process her case, nor explained to her the reason for their delay. We considered this was maladministration.
The injustice to Mrs L
For an extended period of time Mrs L was faced with a degree of uncertainty, frustration and upset, not knowing when her immigration status would be resolved.
How we resolved the complaint
We partly upheld Mrs L’s complaint. The Agency agreed to send her a letter of apology and to make her a consolatory payment of £250 in recognition of the injustice caused.
