This firm caused unnecessary emotional distress with service failings in an immigration case...
Mr K was on a long-term visit to the UK when he fell ill. He was unable to return home due to his ill health, so he instructed the firm to make a permanent residency application for him and his wife.
Mr K said he paid £2,000, provided original identity documentation for him and his wife, and understood that the firm were making the application. Mr K later found out that the application had not been made and, as a result, he and his wife had overstayed their visa. Mr K and his wife had to make another application however they were unable to get their identity documents from the firm in order to do this.
Mr K paid for a representative to bring his complaints to us as English is not his first language. He complained that:
We concluded that the firm’s service was unreasonable for both complaints.
Firstly, the firm could not provide any evidence to show that the application had been lodged, although they sent correspondence to Mr K indicating that it had been.
The firm also delayed in providing Mr K’s identity documents to his new representatives and did not do so until the start of our investigation. The firm did not provide Mrs K’s identity documents, so we concluded that they had been lost.
Mr and Mrs K did not receive what they had paid for and were in a worse position as they had to instruct a new firm to start the process again. To put Mr and Mrs K back in the position they would have been had the service been reasonable, we proposed that the firm provide a full refund of their fees to Mr K. This is because the work that Mr K had paid for was of no benefit to him or his wife.
We also proposed that the firm reimburse Mr K for the fees he had to pay his representatives to bring the complaint to us, which we only recommend in exceptional circumstances. We considered it appropriate in this instance because the matter was complex and, due to his vulnerabilities, Mr K needed support to bring his complaints to us and would have required assistance to obtain further information from the Home Office.
The evidence also showed that Mr and Mrs K experienced ongoing emotional distress because of the firm’s service. They were already vulnerable due to their age and health, and the firm had then exposed them to an extremely stressful situation. The unreasonable service had taken place over a long period of time with a significant impact as they had overstayed their visa. We also recognised that Mr K and his wife would experience ongoing doubt about whether their application would have been successful had it been lodged at the appropriate time. We therefore proposed that the firm pay compensation for the emotional impact to Mr and Mrs K, totalling £3,500.
Mr K accepted our decision which meant that it was binding on the firm.
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