Indefinite leave to remain in UK granted on basis of written maintenance undertaking - no requirement for undertaking to be in prescribed form - failure to use official form not fatal to decision to refuse income support

R (Zar Begum) v Social Security Commissioner and another: QBD (Sir Christopher Bellamy QC): 6 November 2003

The claimant was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK on the basis of a written maintenance undertaking from her son-in-law to the effect that she would have no recourse to public funds.

Her subsequent claim for income support was refused.

The Social Security Appeal Tribunal upheld that decision and a social security commissioner refused her permission to appeal.

She sought judicial review of the commissioner's decision on the ground that the undertaking given was not such as to remove her entitlement to benefit.

Ramby de Mello (instructed by Coventry Law Centre, Coventry) for the claimant; Rebecca Haynes (instructed by the Solicitor, Department for Work and Pensions) for the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions as an interested party; the commissioner did not appear and was not represented.

Held, dismissing the claim, that there was no material difference for present purposes between the legislation in force at the time the undertaking was given and section 115(9) of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, which currently governed such undertakings; that, although standard forms existed for the purpose of making maintenance undertakings under the relevant legislation, Parliament had not prescribed the form which such an undertaking should take; and that, while it was a question of fact in each case as to whether an undertaking was for the purposes of the legislation, the failure to use an official form which might have been in use was not fatal to a decision to withhold income support.