Penny Brownbridge

About Penny Brownbridge

Penny is a Senior Associate Solicitor in our immigration team. She advises on a broad range of immigration and nationality matters, with particular expertise in family-based applications and complex human rights cases.

Penny specialises in applications for family members, including partner, parent and child visas, intercountry adoption, and human rights applications. She regularly advises on British citizenship, indefinite leave to remain, visitor visas, and applications under the EU Settlement Scheme.

She has extensive experience in refugee and asylum matters, having represented clients in this area for over eighteen years. Penny has successfully prepared numerous appeals to the First-tier Tribunal and Upper Tribunal, as well as applications for judicial review.

Penny is also instructed by local authorities to prepare immigration and citizenship applications for children in care.

Penny qualified as a solicitor in 2013. Before joining Wilsons, she was a Senior Caseworker at the Refugee Legal Centre, where she prepared and presented asylum appeals before the immigration tribunal.

Penny is accredited as a Level 2 supervisor under the Law Society Immigration and Asylum Accreditation scheme. She was awarded a distinction in the Legal Practice Course at BPP Law School.

Recent work includes:

• Successfully obtaining visas for spouses and partners of British citizens, including those with complex financial circumstances

• Securing indefinite leave to remain for children joining their family members in the UK

• Assisting a British citizen living abroad to secure citizenship for their adopted child

• Advising on complex applications for British citizenship, particularly where the applicants have excess absences from the UK

• Obtaining a returning resident visa for an applicant who had been living outside the UK for a very extended period

• Obtaining leave to remain for a grandparent to care for their British grandchild in the UK

• Challenging a Home Office certification decision (that the applicant had no right of appeal) by way of judicial review

• Successfully representing refugee clients from a range of countries in asylum applications and appeals