XY v Disclosure And Barring Service [2026] UKUT 149 (AAC) (14 April 2026)

Executive summary

The Upper Tribunal refused the Disclosure and Barring Service’s application to strike out XY’s appeal, holding that the 30 December 2024 DBS letter was legally capable of amounting to a substantive paragraph 18(5) review decision rather than a non-appealable refusal to grant permission to review. The Tribunal said the communicated decision, despite internal inconsistency, conveyed that XY’s name should remain on the barred lists, which was enough to engage the statutory appeal right under section 4(1)(c) of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006.

Key points

• Parties: XY appealed against the Disclosure and Barring Service; Upper Tribunal Judge Brewer decided the strike-out application.
• Issue: whether DBS’s 30 December 2024 communication was only a refusal to permit a review under paragraph 18(4), or a substantive review decision under paragraph 18(5).
• Holding: strike-out refused because the notified decision was treated as one not to remove XY from the barred lists, so jurisdiction existed.
• Reasoning: only substantive review decisions are appealable; a refusal to conduct a review is not, but the Tribunal read the letter as communicating an appealable outcome despite defects.
• Authority relied on: AM v Disclosure and Barring Service and R (Anufrijeva) v SSHD, on jurisdiction and the legal effect of communicated decisions.
• Sanctions/export-control angle: none apparent; this is a safeguarding and administrative-law jurisdiction ruling, not a sanctions or export-control case.

Why it matters

The case matters because it turns on how formally communicated decisions are classified for appeal rights, a question that can affect any regime where access to review depends on whether an authority has made a threshold or substantive determination. For sanctions or national-security compliance teams, the main lesson is procedural: the wording of notices can create appealable legal consequences even when the underlying record suggests something different.

Implications

For compliance and litigation strategy, decision-makers should draft review letters with precision and avoid mixing permission-refusal language with substantive merits reasoning, because inconsistency may preserve appellate jurisdiction. For challengers, the case shows that an imperfect or internally inconsistent notice may still be enough to found jurisdiction if the communication, read as a whole, conveys a final adverse outcome.