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BID welcomes the release today of revised bail guidance for immigration judges. The guidance will come into force on Monday 11th July 2011. Watch this space for BID's assessment of the guidance once we have had time to read it carefully. 

Follow this link to download the new 2011 bail guidance.

In May 2003 ‘Bail Guidance Notes for Adjudicators from the Chief Adjudicator’ were produced by the former President of the Asylum & Immigration Tribunal (AIT), then Chief Adjudicator, Henry Hodge OBE. It is our understanding that they were removed from the AIT website in 2007 and according to the Tribunal have since been under revision. However, despite their removal from the website, until February 2010 the Guidance Notes remained current practice by virtue of a statement in the then-AIT’s Practice Directions that until the Tribunal formulated its own guidelines, the Guidance Notes should continue to be followed. In February 2010, when the AIT transferred into the unified tribunal established by the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 (and since when bail hearings have been heard by the FTTIAC), the statement was not replicated in the ‘Consolidated Asylum and Immigration (Procedure) Rules 2005’ for the First-tier Tribunal and there were no Bail Guidance Notes on the website of the FTTIAC in the list of ‘Guidance notes for the former AIT that are now relevant to FTTIAC’. The bail guidance notes released on July 7th 2011,in the form of Presidential Guidance Note No 1 of 2011, fill that gap.