Points Based System - Court of Appeal criticizes the lack of clarity and complexity with the rules

As you will be aware the Immigration Rules are consistently changing and are also spread across many different appendices to the Immigration Rules which leads to an increasingly complex immigration system, particularly with regards to the Points Based System.

In a recent case in the Court of Appeal (Civil Division), Hossain & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWCA Civ 207,  Lord Justice Beatson stated the following:

‘The detail, the number of documents that have to be consulted, the number of changes in rules and policy guidance, and the difficulty advisers face in ascertaining which previous version of the rule or guidance applies and obtaining it are real obstacles to achieving predictable consistency and restoring public trust in the system, particularly in an area of law that lay people and people whose first language is not English need to understand.’

This is not the first time that the lack of clarity resulting from the complexity of the Immigration Rules has been condemned by the judiciary, and with the way the rules are at present it is unlikely to be the last.