SF applied for leave to enter the UK to join her husband. She was refused entry clearance by the Entry Clearance Officer as, pursuant to the Immigration Rules, she had not established that she could maintain herself in the UK without recourse to public funding. SF appealed that decision. Some 10 months after the decision to refuse entry clearance SF was offered a job with a company in the UK. The AIT granted SF’s appeal on the basis that there was evidence that she could now fund her life in the UK. The ECO successfully sought a reconsideration of that decision on the basis that the immigration judge had made an error of law. SF appealed against the AIT’s reconsidered decision.

The only issue before the Court of Appeal was whether the first immigration judge was entitled in law to rely on the job offer in finding for SF. Section 85(5) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 prescribes that a tribunal, when hearing an appeal, can only take into account evidence appertaining at the time of a decision to refuse. As such, the AIT, on reconsideration, had been correct in finding that the original immigration judge had erred in law in taking SF’s job offer into account. This was not a case where evidence of events after the decision threw light on the circumstances at the time of the decision. The matter was remitted to a differently constituted tribunal.

Jeremy Johnson was described in the 2011 edition of Chambers and Partners as "an extremely bright public lawyer with an outstanding intellect… one to go to if you have a complicated public law challenge…always on top of the facts and　a model of fearless independence"