Pardeep Somel

I am Director in the Immigration Department based at the Milton Keynes office. I have over 15 years experience in asylum and immigration law. I also supervise a team of solicitors and caseworkers that specialise in asylum work, representing victims of torture, human trafficking, gender-based persecution and detention challenges/ removals.

I have extensive experience of litigation in all courts from the First-tier Tribunal through to the Administrative Court and the Court of Appeal. I specialise in working with vulnerable individuals including minors, victims of domestic violence, torture and trafficking with complex cases. I have assisted individuals that were all appeals exhausted by submitting successful further representations and on other occasions prepared grounds for permission to appeal applications to the Upper Tribunal that have led to a grant of refugee status. My broad range of experience includes settlement and entry clearance applications.

I regularly represent detainees held in prison or immigration detention centres as well as those that have been released from immigration detention, by challenging both the Secretary of State’s powers to detain and the removal decision.

I often litigate in a wide range of immigration, asylum and detention related judicial review matters including the following:

• The failure to provide a NASS address (release address) or suitable accommodation within a reasonable time resulting in prolonged immigration detention.
• The failure to apply the detention rules correctly and unlawful decision to detain those accepted as victims of torture or trafficking or unsuitable for detention (Detention Centre Rules 34 and 35)
• Third country removals
• Fresh claim challenges and denial of a right of appeal following a refusal of a fresh claim
• County Court claims for false imprisonment
• Unlawful delay in processing an asylum application or failure to make a decision within a reasonable time
• Certification of an asylum claim as ‘clearly unfounded’ under Section 94 of the Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act 2002

For many of these proceedings, applications for urgent interim relief were also necessary due to the risk irreversible harm.

I qualified as a solicitor in 2009. I am also accredited as a Supervisor and Level 2 Senior Caseworker under the Law Society’s Immigration & Asylum Accreditation Scheme.

I am multilingual and fluent in Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu.

• Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice (LPC) - Inns School of Law
• LLB Honours – University of Hertfordshire

• Duncan Lewis Solicitors: 2018 - present
• Admitted as a solicitor in 2009

• Recommended Lawyer - The Legal 500 UK, (2024)

High Court

• R (Huang) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] EWHC 2069 (Admin)

• Supervisor Level 2 Senior Caseworker under the Law Society’s Immigration & Asylum Accreditation Scheme

• Afghan Children Stranded in Kabul Can Challenge Decisions Affecting their Right to Join Mother in UK (21 March 2024)
• Home Office barred from making trafficked client homeless after successful out of hours application (15 December 2022)
• Well Done to Newly Promoted Immigration Director Pardeep Somel (13 April 2022)
• Court of Appeal grants permission to appeal in the case of MH (Eritrea) v SSHD (C4/2020/1023), which challenges the High Court judgment in Habte, R v SSHD [2020] EWHC 967 (14 April 2021)
• R (on the application of Habte) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWHC 967 (10 June 2020)