Administrative review after a UK visa refusal: can you submit new evidence?

01 / Begin with jurisdiction

Administrative review exists only for an eligible decision on a specified route.

Appendix Administrative Review lists the routes and decisions within the process. The specified routes include, among others, Student, Graduate, Skilled Worker, Global Business Mobility, Global Talent, Innovator Founder and International Sportsperson. The eligible decision may be a refusal of entry clearance, permission to enter or permission to stay, or a qualifying cancellation decision.

The decision notice should identify whether administrative review is available. That statement must still be checked against the Rules. A refusal carrying a right of appeal, an endorsement-review process or no ordinary merits remedy should not be forced into Appendix Administrative Review merely because the applicant describes the decision as a caseworking mistake.

Time runs quickly. The usual limit is 28 calendar days for an entry-clearance refusal, 14 calendar days for an in-country refusal or cancellation where the person is not detained, and 7 calendar days where the person was detained on the decision date. A late application may be accepted only where it would be unjust not to waive time and the application was made as soon as reasonably practicable.

02 / Define the error

The grounds must identify a wrong application of the Rules or published guidance.

AR 3.1 defines the review question. The reviewer decides whether the eligible decision is incorrect because the original decision maker failed to apply, or incorrectly applied, the relevant Immigration Rules or published guidance. Disagreement with an evaluative conclusion is not enough without explaining the rule, guidance or reasoning error.

The strongest grounds work from the refusal reason to the filed record. For each alleged error, identify the operative provision, the finding made, the evidence that was before the decision maker, the correct application of the provision and whether correction would change the outcome. Administrative review is not improved by lengthy repetition of the original application.

AR 3.2 also confines the reviewer to entitlement on the basis of the original application. It prevents administrative review from becoming an application under another route or a new human-rights or asylum claim. A later change in career, finances, relationship or business position may justify another legal step, but it does not retrospectively alter the application that was decided.

03 / Control the record

First distinguish overlooked evidence from genuinely new evidence.

A document uploaded with the application but overlooked by the decision maker is part of the original record. The immediate task is to prove that fact through the application bundle, upload receipt, submission email, sponsor response, UKVI correspondence or other reliable transmission record. Sending another copy does not change when the evidence was first provided.

A document created or supplied only after refusal presents a different question. A new test certificate, later bank statement, revised sponsor letter or fresh commercial contract cannot ordinarily prove that the applicant met the requirements on the original record. Its quality does not open AR 3.3.

The chronology therefore matters as much as the document. Record when the requirement had to be met, when the evidence existed, when it was requested or uploaded, when the decision was made and what the refusal says was considered. That sequence determines whether the case concerns overlooked material, a decision-date error, evidential flexibility or a later attempt to cure the application.

04 / AR 3.3

The Rules create 5 gateways for evidence not before the original decision maker.

The first gateway concerns a refusal on grounds of false representations or deception. The second concerns cancellation on those grounds. The third concerns an entry-clearance refusal based on a previous breach of immigration laws. Each allows later evidence to answer a serious allegation or adverse immigration-history finding within the decision under review.

The fourth gateway, AR 3.3(d), concerns a decision not to request specified documents under former paragraph 245AA. That provision remains relevant to the legal character of certain points-based-system decisions even though current route drafting and guidance have moved on. It should not be pleaded without identifying why paragraph 245AA governed the original decision.

The fifth gateway, AR 3.3(e), concerns a failure to follow the evidential-flexibility policy published on GOV.UK. Current guidance generally tells caseworkers to give an applicant an opportunity where supporting evidence appears erroneous or omitted, or further information or verification is needed, subject to important limits. It does not require the Home Office to invite an applicant to meet the requirement in an entirely different way or to request material that could not affect the outcome.

05 / The reported judgment

Ganeshamoorthy explains the gateways; it does not create a general second chance.

In R (Ganeshamoorthy) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] UKUT 229 (IAC), the applicant had supplied a non-UKVI English-language test certificate with a Skilled Worker entry-clearance application. After refusal he took the correct test and submitted the later certificate on administrative review. The Upper Tribunal considered both the original evidential-flexibility decision and the reviewer's refusal to admit the new certificate.

The tribunal held that AR 3.3(d) does not additionally require the applicant to prove that a decision not to request specified documents under paragraph 245AA was wrong. But that gateway did not assist on the facts because there had been no relevant paragraph 245AA decision. By contrast, AR 3.3(e) requires a substantive error in the decision not to follow the evidential-flexibility policy. The tribunal found such an error and held that gateway open.

The analytical discipline is important. Paragraph 245AA and the published evidential-flexibility policy are not interchangeable. A refusal letter may mention evidential flexibility without engaging paragraph 245AA; a missing or inadequate document may engage the policy without proving that the applicant met the Rules. The grounds should identify the correct source, decision and gateway rather than cite Ganeshamoorthy as a free-standing discretion to admit later evidence.

The judgment interpreted version 11 of the policy. The current Home Office guidance, updated in June 2026, remains materially wider than former paragraph 245AA: it applies across most routes outside Appendix FM, protection and Appendix Victim of Domestic Abuse, and addresses evidence the applicant has or could obtain. The current text must be applied to the route and decision date under review.

06 / Limits of the review

Credibility disputes and later changes do not turn review into a rehearing.

Where a refusal concerns credibility, a genuine vacancy or another evaluative issue, the Home Office guidance directs the reviewer to the material available to the original decision maker, including any interview or verification record. The ground should test whether the reasoning was rational and consistent with the Rules and published guidance; it should not reconstruct the application with a new evidential case unless AR 3.3 permits that evidence.

A change of circumstances after the decision is not ordinarily considered when deciding whether the original decision contained a caseworking error. If administrative review succeeds and the decision is withdrawn, later circumstances may become relevant when the application is reconsidered. Those are separate stages and should not be collapsed in the grounds.

The distinction also affects remedy. If the original decision was correct on the filed evidence but the applicant now meets the requirements, a properly prepared fresh application may address the real problem more directly. If the decision maker overlooked decisive evidence or misapplied a rule that matters to future applications, review may have a wider value. The answer depends on status, timing, route changes and the practical result required.

07 / Status and sequencing

A fresh application, travel and section 3C must be decided together.

A person who already had section 3C leave following an in-time application to vary permission can continue to have section 3C leave while an in-time administrative review is pending. Administrative review does not create section 3C leave for a person who did not already have it. An out-of-time review does not extend section 3C leave unless and until the late review is accepted, when the guidance says leave is reinstated from acceptance.

A fresh immigration application and an administrative review cannot simply proceed as parallel alternatives. AR 2.16 makes a later review invalid where a subsequent application has already been made. AR 4.4 treats a pending review as withdrawn on the day before a new application is made. Home Office section 3C guidance states that the fresh application then brings the section 3C period to an end.

Travel carries its own consequence. An in-country administrative review is treated as withdrawn if the applicant leaves the UK or requests the return of a passport in order to travel. Section 3C leave also lapses on departure. Before filing review grounds or booking travel, establish the person's present permission, work and rent position, family needs, proposed application and the effect of each step in the intended sequence.

08 / Outcome and remedy

Success withdraws the decision for reconsideration; it is not always an immediate grant.

AR 5.1 permits several outcomes. The review may succeed and the eligible decision be withdrawn for reconsideration. It may fail with all reasons maintained, fail with one or more reasons withdrawn, or fail with different or additional refusal reasons. A successful legal ground therefore does not invariably produce immediate permission.

If the refusal is maintained for different or additional reasons, Appendix Administrative Review can permit a further review of those reasons. That is a controlled exception to the normal rule against a second administrative review and should be identified from the outcome notice rather than assumed.

The initial advice should define what success needs to achieve. For a worker and sponsor, the objective may be restoration of the original application date and salary framework. For a founder or Global Talent applicant, it may be correction of a material evidential or guidance error. For a family, the decisive consideration may be lawful status and time apart. Procedure should serve that objective without overstating what the reviewer can decide.

Practical questions.