What administrative review is
Administrative review is a way of asking the Home Office to look again at a refusal where you think the caseworker made an error. A different caseworker, who was not involved in the first decision, checks whether the decision was wrong. It is not an appeal. No independent judge is involved, and it is not a chance to put forward a better application. It is a check for mistakes.
When administrative review is available
It is the main remedy where there is no right of appeal. It covers many refused applications under the points-based system, including Skilled Worker, Health and Care Worker, Student, Graduate and Global Talent, and a range of other applications. It is not available for every refusal. Visitor visa refusals, for example, generally carry no right of review. The decision letter says whether you can ask for administrative review and by when.
If the refusal carries a right of appeal, you appeal, and you cannot also ask for administrative review. See immigration appeals for the decisions that can be appealed.
The deadlines
| Where you are | Time to ask |
|---|---|
| Inside the UK | 14 days from receiving the decision |
| Inside the UK and detained when the decision was served | 7 days |
| Outside the UK | 28 days from receiving the decision |
The deadline is strict. A request that is late is rejected, and there is no appeal against that.
The fee
The fee is £80. If the review succeeds and the Home Office withdraws its decision because of its own error, the fee is refunded. If you withdraw the request yourself, it is not.
What counts as an error
The review looks for a mistake in how the Home Office applied the rules to what you sent. Common examples are:
- The caseworker counted points or income wrongly.
- A document was treated as missing when it was in fact sent.
- The rules or a policy were applied wrongly, or the wrong version of the rules was used.
- A document was refused for a reason that does not appear in the rules.
- The refusal says one thing and the evidence shows another.
It is not an error that you disagree with the outcome, or that you now have better evidence. A review generally cannot consider documents you did not send with the original application. There are narrow exceptions, for example to show that a document the caseworker said was missing was in fact submitted. If your problem is missing evidence, the quicker course is usually a fresh application.
How we help
- We read the refusal and the application together and decide whether there is a real error to point to.
- If there is, we write the request. The request needs to identify each error and say why it is one. A vague complaint fails.
- We submit it within the deadline and pay the fee.
- We tell you honestly if a fresh application is a better route.
How long it takes
It depends heavily on where you are. For applications made from outside the UK it can take 12 months or more to get a result, and the Home Office will update you if there is no decision after six months. Reviews from inside the UK are intended to be quicker. Because of the delay, a fresh application is often the faster way to a visa when the problem is something you can fix.
While the review is pending
If you applied from inside the UK before your permission ran out, and you ask for review in time, your permission is usually treated as continuing until the review is decided. If you make any new immigration application, your review request is withdrawn automatically and the fee is not refunded. Do not make a fresh application until you have been advised which route you are choosing.
The outcome
The review ends in one of three ways: the decision is maintained, the decision is withdrawn and a new one made, or the review finds different reasons for refusal. You cannot ask for a second review unless the first found new reasons for the refusal. If the decision is maintained and you have no other right, a fresh application is your next step.
