UK Immigration Solicitors’ Guide to Spouse Visa Refusal: What you Should do if the Home Office has Refused Your Spouse Visa Application
In Brief
You are probably surprised and angry about the Home Office's decision to refuse your Spouse Visa application and focused on how the visa refusal will affect your sponsoring partner and, if you have children, how your children's lives will be radically different unless you can overturn the refusal.
At OTS Solicitors in London, our dedicated team of Immigration Lawyers help Spouse Visa applicants across the UK and globally. If you are desperate to reunite your family through a Family Visa, we can answer all your questions about UK Spouse Visa appeals, guide you through your options, and help turn a refusal into a visa.
Appeal Options After a Spouse Visa Refusal
It may feel like the end of the world, but there are things a Spouse Visa Solicitor can do to help you secure a Family Visa even if your first or even second application has been refused.
Your Spouse Visa refusal options are:
- Apply again
- Ask the Home Office for an administrative review
- Appeal the decision
- Ask for a judicial review of the decision
- Apply for a different type of UK visa
The Home Office letter should state which of these options are available to you and the deadlines for action.
It's natural to either want to take immediate action before taking time to reflect on the Home Office reasons for the refusal or to do nothing because you don’t think that you or your partner can cope with an appeal or making a second application when you think the Home Office will only say no again, leading to further disappointment.
Before you make any immigration appeal decisions, you should:
- Carefully read through the Home Office refusal letter
- Speak to a specialist Spouse Visa Solicitor
The Home Office Spouse Visa Refusal Letter
The Home Office explains its reasoning for refusing a visa application in its refusal letter. While you may disagree with the Home Office decision, it's important to understand the Home Office rationale so you can use the information in the letter to work out the best way to challenge it.
Taking the time to digest the contents and take immigration legal advice can save you time, stress, and money. An Immigration Lawyer can help you figure out whether an administrative review application has reasonable prospects of success, and if not, discuss the alternatives of an appeal or a fresh application.
The contents of the Home Office letter help your Immigration Lawyer draw up an action plan and the basis for an appeal or new application. Any appeal paperwork needs to focus on the Home Office's area of concern, such as the genuineness of your relationship or whether your sponsoring partner has proved that their income meets the financial requirement.
Reasons for Spouse Visa Refusals
The specific reasons for the refusal of your Spouse Visa will be critical in determining your next steps.
Ten common reasons for Spouse Visa refusals:
- Insufficient evidence that you are in a genuine relationship with your sponsoring partner
- The Home Office believes that you have not met the financial requirement
- You have not proved that you can speak the English language to the required standard, or you have not adequately proven that you are exempt from sitting the English language test
- You have not shown that you have accommodation that meets the accommodation requirement
- You filled in the wrong form
- You did not pay the correct application fee or the immigration health surcharge fees
- You said you were supplying specific documents, but they were missing from your bundle
- The Home Office did not accept that your evidence meets the required evidential standard
- You did not disclose relevant information, such as a prior conviction
- The Home Office say you do not meet the general eligibility criteria for a UK visa. For example, you disclosed a recent serious conviction
A Spouse Visa Lawyer can review the Home Office letter, your application and the supporting documents you submitted. Their immigration legal advice will depend on the reasons for the refusal and your application and paperwork.
Sometimes a Home Office official will say an applicant failed to supply a key document, such as the marriage certificate, but the certificate was supplied but overlooked by the caseworker. In this scenario, an administrative review application is the cheapest and quickest way to help you obtain your Family Visa.
Refusal Action Deadlines
Once you receive a refusal letter, you need to act quickly because there are appeal deadlines.
You have:
- 28 calendar daysto submit an appeal if you applied for your Family Visa from outside the UK
- 14 calendar days if your application was made from within the UK
You may be tempted to wait and hold off on taking any steps until you have spoken to your family, but a delay could work against you. Your lawyer will need to review the Home Office letter and consider what additional paperwork will be crucial to the success of your administrative review application, appeal or new Family Visa application.
It may take time to source the required documents, such as a missing bank statement or a letter from your sponsoring partner’s accountant or employer. That’s why acting quickly and consulting with a Visa Lawyer in London gives you and your solicitor the edge, enabling them to present the best possible case.
If you are outside the time limits, it's still worth speaking to an Immigration Solicitor as they may be able to make a case to extend the limit in exceptional situations or be able to make a fresh application for a Spouse Visa or an alternate visa, such as an Innovator Founder Visa or Global Talent Visa.
Administrative Review Applications
An administrative review is a quasi-appeal, but it is very limited because:
- You don’t go to court – the administrative review is carried out by a different caseworker at the Home Office from the one who decided to refuse your application
- You can't submit substantial additional evidence
Whilst an administrative review is the quickest and cheapest of the Spouse Visa refusal options, it is normally reserved for when a Home Office official has misread your application or not spotted a vital bit of information.
Appealing a Spouse Visa Refusal
You will normally have a right of appeal against the refusal of a Spouse Visa application. You may question this as most visa applications don’t have a right of appeal, but Family Visa applications are different to many UK visas because they usually include a human rights claim. This enables your Immigration Lawyer to argue that the refusal breached your right to family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In an appeal, the court (the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) can either decide your appeal after reading the appeal paperwork or hold a tribunal hearing. The appeal process allows you to submit additional relevant evidence and, in some cases, give evidence at a tribunal hearing.
Deadlines to submit an appeal are strictly applied unless your Immigration Solicitor advises that, because of your unusual situation, it is worth applying to the tribunal to ask them to extend the time limit.
Depending on the complexity of your appeal, it may take several months and could involve more than one hearing. This adds to the stress and costs of the appeal. It’s the reason why many Immigration Appeal Lawyers advise you to make a fresh application, as that route is potentially cheaper and quicker.
Judicial Review of a Spouse Visa Refusal
A judicial review is different to an appeal. In a judicial review, you are not asking the court to overturn the Home Office decision to refuse your Family Visa application. Instead, you are asking the court to rule that the Home Office decision was unlawful and that your application should be reconsidered.
The grounds for an immigration judicial review are:
- Illegality
- Irationality
- Procedural unfairness
Spouse Visa judicial review applications can be considered where a caseworker has not correctly applied the immigration rules or relevant Home Office guidance.
Judicial review rules require applicants to comply with the Pre-Action Protocol (PAP). You must send a PAP letter to the Home Office before filing your application. The PAP letter must set out the legal grounds for judicial review and the remedy you are seeking. The Home Office has 14 days to reply.
Although judicial review proceedings can be lengthy, Visa Appeal Solicitors have had an excellent success rate with PAP letters in cases where a Home Office official has mistakenly applied the wrong criteria when assessing the application.
New Spouse Visa Application
In a significant proportion of refusals, a Spouse Visa application was rejected by a caseworker because an applicant either didn’t give the Home Office the information it needed to make a decision or didn't back the information up with sufficient evidence.
It's natural to feel defensive about the quality of your first visa application or to feel affronted that the information you gave about your relationship, finances or accommodation wasn’t considered adequate by some unknown Home Office official.
Our Immigration Solicitors understand how frustrated you are at receiving a refusal letter, and how your first thought is that the Home Office made an error and should be held to account by appealing or applying for judicial review. However, sometimes the refusal is down to either you or your former lawyer not providing the Home Office with the required information and documentation because the immigration rules and guidance are so complicated to navigate and understand.
The job of a specialist Spouse Visa Solicitor is to give you an honest appraisal of where things went wrong with your first Spouse Visa application and advise on the quickest way to help you successfully apply for a visa. If their review concludes that even with a well-prepared application and the correct paperwork, you don’t meet the visa criteria, they’ll look at alternatives, such as the Skilled Worker Visa or Health and Care Worker Visa.
In many situations, an applicant has a good chance of securing a Spouse Visa with a better prepared application and the right evidence. It’s a case of carefully reviewing the Home Office refusal letter, your application, and the bundle of evidence. Weirdly, you may find that our specialist Spouse Visa Solicitors submit less evidence in support of your second Spouse Visa application than you sent with your first application. We may also obtain evidence that you don’t think is necessary, but our experience tells us what works.
It won't work if:
- You send your spouse’s complex financial information demonstrating how they meet the financial requirement to the Home Office again without a simple explanatory letter from your accountant clarifying what the company accounts and paperwork say
- You send all the WhatsApp messages between you and your spouse to prove you are in a genuine relationship. For some couples, that’s a truckload of evidence. It's better to send a limited number of social media exchanges
- You tell the Home Office that you are going to live in Kensington, and therefore the accommodation requirement is obviously met. The Home Office won't make assumptions based on postcode; accommodation evidence is needed in every Family Visa application
Talk to the Spouse Visa Lawyers at OTS Solicitors
When you’ve recently experienced the bitter disappointment of a Home Office refusal letter, it can be hard to believe that anyone else will be able to persuade the Home Office to come to a different decision.
As specialist Spouse Visa Solicitors, a significant proportion of the Family Visa applications we handle involve situations where an applicant has made their own initial application or used different lawyers. We are used to quickly digesting Home Office refusal letters, reviewing your application, and developing a strategy to help you secure your visa. Depending on your situation, that may be an administrative review application, a new visa application or, if circumstances dictate that it’s the best option for you, an appeal or a judicial review PAPS letter.
With OTS Solicitors, you can be confident that you are in safe hands with lawyers who understand the immigration rules and Home Office guidance to help you secure your Family Visa.
Frequently Asked Questions on Spouse Visa Refusal
Do I have to use the same solicitor to appeal a Home Office decision?
No, you don’t. It can help to have a fresh pair of legal eyes review your application and documents and recommend either an appeal or a fresh visa application.
Why has the Home Office said I don’t meet the financial requirement for the Spouse Visa?
The current minimum salary threshold for the Spouse Visa is £29,000. If your sponsoring partner is employed and you sent all the correct paperwork, the Home Office may have made a mistake when assessing your application. If your spouse is self-employed or a company director, or you relied on a combination of sources of income or cash savings, you may not have sent all the documents the rules require.
How can I prove my relationship is genuine?
A significant percentage of Family Visa refusals are due to relationship evidence. You may think that a second application or an appeal is hopeless, as you won't get a different result. However, with an application that covers why you meet the relationship criteria and carefully curated evidence of the type the Home Office needs, you may secure your Family Visa by making a second application.
How long does it take to get a visa after the Home Office has refused a Spouse Visa application?
How long it’ll take to get a visa for you depends on whether our UK Immigration Lawyers recommend an administrative review application, a fresh visa application or an appeal or judicial review. An administrative review can take a few weeks, or an appeal over 12 months. Our Spouse Visa Solicitors will always explain why their recommendation is the best option for you.
Should I wait before making another Spouse Visa application?
Applicants who applied for a Spouse Visa from outside the UK and had their application refused often ask if they should wait a few months before making a second application. Normally, that’s unnecessary. A delay won't help you secure a visa if your first application was only refused because you didn’t know what information and documents should be included in your application.
How do I prove I have adequate accommodation?
The evidence you need to send to show that you have adequate accommodation depends on where you will be living in the UK. Most types of accommodation are adequate, including living with family. A Visa Lawyer can explain the detailed rules if accommodation was a factor in the Home Office decision to refuse your application.