Home
Complex & Human Rights
Family & Private Life

Family & Private Life Human Rights Application | ICS Legal

The purpose of the new formed immigration rules was to allow a person to apply for leave to enter or remain in the UK, on the basis of their partner or as a parent. Consideration would be given in line with Article 8 (right to family and private life of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The protection of both family & private life is under both the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and domestic law. Right to family life is guaranteed under Article 8 of the ECHR, and the Home Office must demonstrate their reasons to interfere with that right.

Further to that, Article 12 of the ECHR provides the protection to a person with a right to marry in the UK and to found a family.

Background to Appendix FM of the Immigration Rules

The policy was introduced on the 9^th of July 2012 with aim to allow a person to apply for leave to enter or remain in the UK on the basis of a person’s right to family life in the UK.

The right to family life is specifically protected by both Article 8 and 12 of the ECHR. Appendix FM considers the best interest of a child. Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 must be given consideration on a family & private life application, where the decision impacts children. Further to that Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child requires the Home Office to demonstrate that the primary consideration of a child’s best interest has been considered.

The Immigration Act 2014 received Royal Assent on 14 May 2014, whereby since 28^th of July 2014, the Home Office will consider the public interest arguments on all applications based on family and private life. Both the Tribunal & Courts must give due weight to the public interest whenever an application based on family and private life is lodged.

Family life with a partner

Both Article 8 and 12 of the ECHR does not just apply to the traditional idea of families based on marriage but this also extends to other forms of relationship, such as un-married partners.

The Home Office is under an obligation not to interfere with family life or make the immigration rules as the grounds to refuse leave to remain, and must always demonstrate that their decision is fair & transparent.

Whenever an application is lodged based on Appendix FM of the immigration rules, the following requirements needs to be met:

You and your partner must demonstrate that you are in a genuine and subsisting relationship with the intention to live together in the UK permanently.
Your partner must be in the UK and is settled.
You and your partner must demonstrate that you can be supported financially in the UK and have adequate accommodation.
Meet the suitability of leave to remain in the UK.

This route of application is usually made by a person who cannot satisfy the full requirements of the partner visa route. This may include but not limited to, the person not holding valid leave to remain, cannot meet the financial test, overstayed their current visa, to name some of the instances whereby an application will need to be lodged under this category.

Whilst a person have a right to family life in the UK, that itself would not sufficient to meet the high threshold set out and in each application will need to be considered on their own merits.

Family life with children

Appendix FM has introduced a new category, whereby a parent of a child in the UK is eligible to lodge an application, which is also treated as a family based application. The application considers the best interest of a child and the parent must demonstrate that the following requirements can be met:

You must demonstrate that you have a genuine and subsisting relationship with a child under the age of 18 years.
The child must be in the UK unless the child is joining you in the UK.
The other parent of the child will need to be in the UK unless you hold sole parental rights.
Where the application is based on the child, he or she must be British, lived in the UK for 7 years or is settled in the UK.
The child cannot be cared or supported by the other parent.
There are strong grounds of family life between you and the child.

Private life application

Private life is part of Article 8 of the ECHR and has now been incorporated as part of the immigration rules namely part 7. The European Court has given a broad interpretation to private life based application, and held that it would be too restrictive to limit the notion of a person’s private life.

In all applications, a person must meet the suitability of leave to remain requirements.

First of all, if a person has lived in the UK for 20 years, the Home Office is likely to grant leave to remain for a period of 30 months. Information as well as evidences related to the residency would need to be provided.

Where a person have not lived in the UK for more than 20 years, then you must demonstrate that you have established a life in the UK, does not have any social, cultural or family ties to the country of return.

Legal representation for the family and private life application

Your legal representation will form a crucial part of your application for leave to remain in the UK. We will assess your application, advise you on the evidences required and also prepare the application, to ensure that the application is not refused.

At ICS Legal, we value our clients and always put you first. We listen to you carefully, explaining how we will prepare your application and what merits the application will have including all risks associated to that. By using our knowledge and experience, we prepare a good immigration application. We are passionate about providing successful outcomes on all our applications we submit including the legal advice we provide.

In doing this, we create and build a strong & long lasting relationships with our clients that are primarily built on trust. We believe a good UK Immigration Lawyer is approachable, innovative and open, with your best interest at heart of what we do.

For more information speak to one of our UK Immigration Lawyers on 0207 237 3388 or you can email us on info@icslegal.com.

Related FAQ's

We specialise in Immigration Law, Human Rights Law, British Nationality Law & European Law (post Brexit).

Our Lawyers provide honest, trusted legal advice and exceptional service to all our clients. In return, we would expect all our clients to treat our professionals with courtesy and respect.

ICS Legal provides our clients with initial advice, to program management and compliance services - bringing in value to what we deliver.

Our speciality lies in the field of Immigration, Nationality and EU Law, so it means we always are dealing with this side of the law. We are able to support you in making a correct decision, avoid delays on your case, save money and time, not forgetting the stress of any doubts with your application.

There are many routes available to come to the UK, extend or switch, some of them do not allow extension or even switching. Knowing what is right can be a difficult task and this is why we are here. Simple task of not using the prescribed forms can mean your application is invalid, which means if you have no valid stay, you would have to return back and there is no appeal rights.

Our initial consultations are a chargeable service. We initially discuss the requirements of the application to ensure you meet the requirements and have the documentation required at hand for the submission. It gives you an opportunity to meet us and ask questions.

Each case will be checked thoroughly, everything will be cross referenced so guidelines are met and we will also add our legal document which would outline the Immigration Rules and how the client has satisfied the rules. We use documents that are used by Home Office case workers, so we know exactly what they would look for in your case.

The most important fact is that law constantly changes, policy guidelines and requirements are always changing, so it is best that you always use specialised services to support you. We never compromise our services, our fees remain very competitive but our expertise is at the very highest standard.

We are regulated by the Immigration Advice Authority (IAA) - at the highest level which is Level 3 with JRCM licence.

IAA which is the rebrand of OISC is the UK Government Regulated Body and it is a criminal offence if someone is providing Immigration advice without being regulated by the IAA.

Please visit our regulatory bodes page to find more information of government and other agencies which we listed by. Click here.

Your Lawyer would take some background information regarding yourself. Relevant questions would be asked to ascertain whether your case can be handled by our team.

You will also be able to ask questions, understand what is required to meet the Immigration Rules, Nationality Law and EU Law where relevant.

Should we be able to provide assistance, your case worker will give you a customer care letter whereby it would outline the service agreement and the cost associated.

After each consultation we aim to provide a consultation report which would outline what was discussed, the action plan and what to do next.

We have a procedure in place for ensuring client confidentiality.

We keep the affairs of our clients and all information relating to our clients confidential, except where we are compelled to disclose information by reason of a legal or regulatory obligation.

A customer care letter from us will ensure that we outline the service we would be providing, it would also provide a break down of the costs associated so you can rest assure that there are no hidden charges and that fees do not go up unless changes are made (i.e. Home Office fees etc).

We place our clients first, so when you sign the customer care letter and we go through your case file, and we believe that the case would not be successful, we will terminate the agreement and return your documents.

We will also provide alternative solutions with no added costs. We also have a cancellation period should you feel you want to withdraw your file.

Please note that all cases cannot be guaranteed as circumstances depends and whether you met guidelines, however the Home Office caseworker can still refuse cases on the balance of probabilities and other factors.

Our job would be to prepare your case in the best possible way.

Yes, we do. ICS Legal other than fixed costs, offer our client's priority services in what we do including retainer services.

As a private legal firm, we want to ensure we can provide the service you want. Our fees are very competitive and that is why we do not provide a No Win No Fee service as we do not feel the need to over charge our clients with such schemes.

With us, you will know exactly what we would be charging.

The fees are to be paid through cash or bank transfer.

Home Office, third party including other costs not charged by us, will be confirmed when that is possible and are subject to changes.

Our commitment to our clients is that we will update you every time we get an update from the Home Office. The waiting period can be a very daunting time as decisions can be life changing however the Home Office do set some guidelines on waiting times, but we intend to keep you updated throughout the process.

No, and this is the same even if you use a no win no fee service, it would be impossible for anyone to guarantee a successful application. The likelihood of an application being successful can be given based on previous cases or success rates, however we do not operate such a policy of selling our services based on previous applications.

We aim to ensure that this service is not used by any of our clients, but there are times where even with the best possible applications are unsuccessful. As we take our clients cases personally, we would like to provide a helping hand. We have designed an aftercare service whereby if your case fails, then your case worker would be able to help you look at other formalities of staying in the UK should you have valid leave still remaining or help you make an out country application. Please note should you require appealing on your matter, we can only deal with the initial appeal and your application will be straight away referred to an advisor who deals with representations.

It is vital that all our clients can provide honest feedback, we would encourage this and this helps us to become better on our service delivery.

No, we do not offer any services to find work or sponsorship.

When you instruct ICS Legal, we will set out the scope of work. This will tell you the work we have agreed to complete and set out the charges.

This means, we will tell you the services that are covered by the fixed costs work which we would set out in our email to you and the Client Care Letter (CCL).

1. Our Terms of Business (TOB) can be found by clicking here.

We are transparent in the ways we work. Please note, as you are buying professional legal advice, its important you understand our terms of working and what is being offered.

ICS Legal operating model is line with how law firms operate - however please note each firm have their own process and policies.

If you are unsure of what the scope of the work is or require more tailored advice & help, please email us at info@icslegal.com. We value our client's feedback.

Family & Private Life Human Rights Application | ICS Legal

On this page

Related FAQ's