High Court rejects claim asylum seeker was a child when he entered UK and had his age assessed

No arguable public law error arose when the London Borough of Hounslow assessed a Sudanese asylum seeker as being an adult.

That conclusion was reached by Dexter Dias KC, sitting as a deputy High Court judge, in a case in which MAA claimed he should have been classed as a child aged 17 when he arrived in the UK in October 2023.

He appealed against Hounslow’s assessment on the ground that irrelevant considerations were taken into account when material considerations were not, and there had been a failure to reassess.

MAA also said there had been procedural unfairness - with no appropriate adult and no ‘minded-to’ process - and made a factual challenge.

The court rejected all of these and ordered MAA to pay part of Hounslow’s costs.

Mr Dias said he faced “an entirely binary question: either the claimant is a child or is not.

“The significance is that being legally classified as a child is a vital precedent fact opening the door to a range of important protective public law duties that fall on public bodies.”

MAA relied on the opinion evidence of a children's advisor in the Age Dispute Project at the Refugee Council. He also cited the evidence of the lead coordinator of the refugee response at Hillsong Church and said that a wristband from a French hospital he passed through in transit to the UK showed his claimed age.

Mr Dias noted in his judgment that against this was the evidence of a Home Office official, and two sets of age-assessment-trained social workers.

“It can be readily accepted that [the Age Dispute Project] is careful about whom to support,” the deputy judge said.

“But the fact remains that [the children's advisor] is not age-assessment-trained and the decisions made do not appear to be based on any professional training in assessing age.”

The social workers had specific training in age assessment, and “I accept [Hounslow’s] submission that [the children's advisor] evidence is ‘pretty slight’”, Mr Dias said.

He said the lead coordinator’s evidence did not add "anything of material or persuasive significance” since he met MAA only once in a café without an interpreter and was not trained in age assessment.

Mr Dias said MAA “has advanced no arguable rationality argument”

On the procedural fairness point, Mr Dias said it was “now settled law that the lack of an appropriate adult is not necessarily fatal to the fairness of an age assessment” and  questioned what would have been achieved by use of a ‘minded to’ process.

The deputy judge said: ”Ultimately, the claimant relies on his self-reports in the UK and France and two opinions from people who work with refugees but have no training whatsoever in age assessment, and against this, the defendant has five very broadly consistent age assessments, where four are from social workers specifically trained in age assessment.”

He concluded on the material before the court taken at its highest, “the factual challenge could not properly succeed”.

Mr Dias said: “There is no arguable public law error here”, and ordered MAA to pay Hounslow’s costs of preparing the acknowledgement of service.

Mark Smulian