Manchester administrative court denies care worker's settlement challenge over missing records

The Manchester administrative court has denied Nisha Bedi's request for reconsideration of a settlement refusal and for settlement relief. It found that she had not shown the refusal relied on a residence requirement that was not in force.

Bedi said she applied after five years as a care worker but was told she needed ten. The court said the evidence did not establish which rule applied when she was refused, and it did not find that the refusal was correct.

The decisive gaps were the refusal date and the decision record. Without them, the court could not compare the basis of the refusal with the rule in force at the time.

A November 2026 policy-announcement excerpt described a proposed ten-year default and a possible five-year route for eligible care workers. It did not say whether or when the proposal took effect. Three copies of the excerpt were presented, but they were not independent confirmation.

The court accepted Bedi's account as evidence of what she understood and said she was told, not as proof of the applicable rule. Although the Secretary of State could not identify the rule or provide the missing decision record, that did not itself prove Bedi's claim that a proposal had been applied.

Because Bedi sought relief, she bore the burden of establishing the facts needed to support it. The court said the record showed neither that she met the applicable settlement requirements nor that the refusal contained a demonstrated error.

Bedi argued that she had been misled and understood the relevant period to be five years. She maintained that the ten-year requirement was only a proposal and asked to be allowed to settle.

The Secretary of State for Migration said the announcement could not establish whether the proposal later took effect. The Secretary asked the court to deny reconsideration on the available record or, alternatively, limit relief to checking the rule in force on the decision date, rather than grant settlement outright.

Bedi said she applied for settlement after working as a care worker for five years and received a refusal stating that ten years were required. No refusal notice or decision record was supplied to the court.

The judgment leaves the underlying rule unresolved: it does not establish that the ten-year requirement was in force, that a five-year route was unavailable, or that the refusal was substantively correct. The court declined to order even a check of the applicable rule because it found no established basis for relief in the proceeding.