University Sponsorship Withdrawal Ruled Unlawful in High Court Judicial Review

University should have rescinded withdrawal of student’s sponsorship

We read a lot about migrants taking legal action against the Home Office/UK Visas & Immigration in Judicial Review. Judicial Review is a remedy of challenge where there is no right of appeal and it is held in the Upper Immigration Tribunal or High Court.

But could a student migrant who is poorly treated by their sponsoring educational institution make a Judicial Review claim against the institution? This is not something that comes up so frequently, and readers may be interested to know that the answer is potentially Yes; Judicial Review can in some circumstances be applied for and, furthermore, such applications can be successful or at any rate partially successful, as we reveal below.

The student in this case was Mr Zuhaib Khan, a Pakistani national, and the sponsoring university was Coventry University. The legal action was a Judicial Review claim in the High Court. Mr Khan was incidentally represented by “Professor Shah” (this was not as far as we can tell the same person as Mr Shah, Director of GSN Immigration).

Mr Khan duly paid his tuition fees initially in 2024 but he paid further fees some days too late in 2025 and, as a result of this, the university withdrew his sponsorship. Mr Khan thought that this was unfair or unreasonable and he challenged before the High Court and thus he became the Claimant (The King on the application of Zuhaib Khan [2025] EWHC 3120 (Admin)).

The judge (Judge Tindal), in a fairly discursive judgement, went through the rules and the scheme for student sponsorship. He pointed out that educational institutions have a solemn duty to monitor their students and have the power to cancel sponsorship if it is appropriate. Indeed, if they fail in these duties they can be sanctioned by the Home Office and their sponsor licence can be revoked. To look at it in a slightly different way, educational institutions are expected to play their part in immigration control, and you could fairly say that the powers of educational institutions to withdraw sponsorship are fairly broad. 

But is the power of an educational institution to withdraw sponsorship unlimited, or is it constrained by legal principles? The judge was in no doubt that it is. Any such withdrawal must be “public law-compliant”. This sounds intuitively good and fair, but what does it really mean? Public law, we seem to remember from law school, is about the law that governs the relationship between the individual and the state. In this case Coventry University embodied the state, and so under public law principles the University had a duty to treat Mr Khan correctly and fairly. 

However, as the judge said, there is a difficult balance of interests here. Immigration control is important but so are the public law rights for the individual. So the court would necessarily have to make a finely-balanced decision.

The detailed facts of the case were these. The payments were not made direct to the University; they were made via a fee management company called “Convera” and the deadline to pay fees was 7 July 2025. Mr Khan made two payments, for the correct total amount, from two different bank accounts, on 3 July and 4 July. The problem arose because – as the court relates – the second payment was “not properly referenced” and it did not get through to the University until 21 July, which was of course too late. 

It turns out that the second payment had disappeared down an “administrative black hole” at Convera but eventually the payment was located, albeit too late, with its incorrect reference. The judge was very sympathetic about this: “This was the most minor mistake by the Claimant that could happen to anyone. But the consequences for him of this administrative tangle have been catastrophic.” From the judge’s remarks we can immediately see here which way the wind was blowing.

There was, as the judge said, “considerable muddle” in this case but the upshot was that on 18 July the University informed Mr Khan that his sponsorship had been withdrawn because he had not paid all the fees – at that point the second payment had not yet been received by the University and was not received, as explained above, until 21 July. But Mr Khan did everything he possibly could to rectify the situation and emailed the University assiduously, but to no avail.

Mr Khan subsequently appealed to the University but this did not do any good either, and so he instructed lawyers to challenge by way of Judicial Review, and they really put it quite well:

The university had the right amount of the fee by 18 and 21 July 2025. His classes are starting on 25 September 2025. He has not missed classes, and there is no gap in his studies. Reporting him to the Home Office was not justified, reasonable and unfair. The university has breached its contractual obligations based upon the principle of fairness and natural justice. The consequences of withdrawing sponsorship are extremely harsh and disproportionate financially, physically and impracticable. Financially, it is very harsh as he had to go back to Pakistan, reapply for a visa and pay for air tickets. It is draining physically and emotionally. He is under tremendous stress and has registered himself with a mental health support provider and the university well-being team. It has seriously undermined Mr Khan’s immigration history, which will have serious post-study consequences as well. To avoid undue hardship to Mr Khan and complaints and/or legal action against the university, we request that the university restore the sponsorship and notify the Home Office that his sponsorship has been restored to prevent visa curtailment and that Mr Khan can continue his classes in September 2025.

but alas, still to no avail, and so the matter proceeded to a hearing.

Things by this time had got rather complicated. Various issues and arguments were invoked but unsuccessfully. The issue of human rights and Article 8 (right to private life) was raised but also unsuccessfully (and here we see the strong importance of immigration control). 

But in two ways the claim was strong, as per the judge: “… the Defendant acted irrationally and wrongly in failing to retract its withdrawal of sponsorship after it had received payment on 21st July 2025” and “I found it arguable the Defendant acted irrationally by failing on or after 21st July even to attempt to withdraw its notification of cancellation to the Home Office. I pointed out it was permitted to do so notwithstanding the sponsor regime; entitled to do so under its own policies, which cannot fetter its discretion; and arguably it did not undermine administration.”

Irrationality is you might say a famous grounds for Judicial Review. If a decision is irrational or illogical to the extent that no reasonable decision-maker could have made it it might be unlawful. 

Fettering discretion is more difficult to define. A decision-maker should not “close their ears” to something that may be relevant or, to adopt a different metaphor, should not adopt a “blinkered” approach. Another formulation is that a decision-maker must not shut their ears to an application and refuse to listen at all, but must be always willing to listen to anyone with something new or different to say. Yet another way – and this is something that has a more specifically “legal” approach – a decision-maker should not unfairly refuse to exercise discretion and, of course, should exercise discretion fairly and reasonably.

In the instant case we see that the University acted in a way that was mechanical and formulaic and did not consider arguments that did not fit into their way of looking at things. 

So, here we come to the nub of things:

Therefore, the Defendant either fettered its discretion, exercised it irrationally in failing to rescind, or exercised it irrationally in failing even to enquire about that with the Home Office. On any one of these three bases, I am driven to the conclusion that – even making full allowances as I have done for the importance to the Defendant and other sponsored students of compliance with Home Office guidance, in the unusual circumstances of this case the Defendant’s conduct either fettered its discretion or was irrational and so I uphold Ground 4 [of the Judicial Review claim]. 

And also, interestingly:

Nevertheless, I hope that the Defendant and other sponsor universities faced with similar issues in the future behave more rationally and flexibly – and perhaps simply with more pastoral understanding.

So now the University now has to re-take the decision. We might summarise things in this way: universities and educational institutions need to take a more flexible approach to sponsored students.

If you are affected by any such issues please contact us at GSN Immigration and we will do what we can to help.

Oliver Westmoreland

Senior Immigration Lawyer