Sixty days, two doors, and only one of them fits your refusal

Last updated 18 August 2026Legal review Bayraktar Attorneys2 min readThe file

The deadline is the same for both remedies, which makes the choice look symmetrical. It is not. The nature of the refusal determines which door is worth opening.

The clock starts at notification

Sixty days from the date the decision is notified to you — not from the date it was made, and not from the date you understood it. Establish the notification date immediately and in writing, because everything after it is measured from that point.

The second thing to establish is the reason. A refusal that states its ground can be answered; one that does not is itself vulnerable, since administrative decisions are expected to be reasoned. Where the reason is not given, request the file.

When an objection is the right tool

Where the defect is curable and evidential. Income documented thinly and now documentable properly; a permit history the administration read incorrectly; an absence miscounted against the twelve-month allowance; a document that was missing and now exists. The objection puts new material in front of the decision-maker without the cost and delay of litigation.

Its limitation is that it asks the same body to reconsider, and it does not stop the litigation clock running in the way applicants assume. Treat an objection as a step to be taken quickly and with the court deadline diarised, never as an alternative to watching the calendar.

When the answer is the administrative court

Where the refusal is substantively wrong, unreasoned, based on a mistaken fact that the administration will not revisit, or rests on a discretionary ground applied without foundation. The court examines the lawfulness of the decision: whether the correct legal test was applied, whether the facts support it, whether the reasoning holds.

Security and public order grounds are the hardest category, because the underlying material is often not disclosed. They are not hopeless, but they need a lawyer from the first day rather than after an objection has been refused. Why these files need a lawyer makes the general point; the refusals guide maps ground to remedy in detail.

The option nobody sells: apply again

Where the refusal was correct on the facts — the Turkish was genuinely inadequate, the income genuinely undocumented, the period genuinely short — a fresh application after fixing the defect is faster, cheaper and more likely to succeed than a challenge. Litigating a refusal you deserved builds a record that the next application has to live with.

The judgement is about which category you are in, and it is not one to make from the notification letter alone. Get the file, read the reasoning, then choose.