Ndidi v The United Kingdom, No. 41215/14, ECHR, 14th September 2017
The applicant was a Nigerian national and entered the United Kingdom in 1989 before being granted indefinite leave to remain in 2003.The applicant developed a record of criminal offences and was given fair warning of deportation. In 2011, after release from an institution for young offenders, he was served with a decision for automatic deportation. After a series of appeals in the UK the applicant raised two complaints with the European Court of Human Rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The first complaint was that the Immigration Rules require ‘exceptional circumstances’ before deportation is considered a violation of Article 8. This is a higher standard than that of ‘proportionality’ found in Strasbourg jurisprudence. The second complaint was that the applicant’s deportation is a disproportionate action that will violate his Article 8 right to private and family life. The court rejected the applicant’s first complaint as it was found he had failed to exhaust domestic remedies. With regards to the second complaint the court found that deportation would interfere with the applicant’s Article 8 right. However, the Court in this case decided that the applicant’s deportation would not be in breach of Article 8 as it was recognised that throughout all domestic proceedings the applicant’s Article 8 right had been carefully balanced against the public interest. The court found no need to reconsider the decision reached in domestic proceedings where they had utilised the test of proportionality required by the convention. As such, the court decided that there had been no violation of the applicant’s Article 8 right.
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