Nadia O’Mara of the Garden Court Chambers Public Law Team is instructed by Radhi Shah of Coram Children’s Legal Centre.
The High Court has granted permission in a judicial review claim brought by the Claimant, an age-disputed South Sudanese asylum-seeker, in a challenge to an age assessment decision by the Home Office’s National Age Assessment Board (‘NAAB’) which concluded that he was an adult, and not a child as claimed. The claim will now be transferred to the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) for determination of the Claimant’s age.
The NAAB, which was established through sections 50 and 51 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, is a decision-making function in the Home Office that is empowered to conduct age assessments.
The existence and independence of the NAAB has been strongly criticised by the British Association of Social Workers (‘BASW’). As recently as March 2025, BASW has called on the government to scrap the NAAB, expressing deep concerns that “any agency that is part of the Home Office … risks age assessments being influenced by political priorities … as opposed to child welfare and human rights”.[1]
Prior to the NAAB decision, the Claimant had been looked after by Lancashire County Council and was surrounded by a strong support network, including at his college. Following the decision, the Claimant was dispersed to Home Office hotel accommodation with unknown adults under s. 95 IAA 1999. That accommodation was in a different local authority area, far from his friends and support network of professionals.
The Claimant sought interim relief that he be treated as a child pending the final determination of his age to put him back in the position he was in prior to the arguably unlawful decision regarding his age.
However, local authority duties under the Children Act 1989 are triggered by physical presence. Because the Claimant had been dispersed by the Home Office, he was no longer physically present in the local authority area of Lancashire County Council.
Both the NAAB and the provision of asylum support accommodation are functions of the Secretary of State for the Home Department (‘SSHD’), the defendant in this claim. However, the SSHD does not bear the statutory burden of accommodating unaccompanied asylum-seeking children; that responsibility falls to the local authority.
Therefore, in granting interim relief, HHJ Pearce, sitting as a Judge of the High Court, ordered both that the Claimant be treated as a child pending the final determination of his age, and that the SSHD disperse the Claimant back to the local authority area of Lancashire County Council so that he could return to its care, rather than the local authority where he had been dispersed and with which he had no prior connection.
The Judge agreed with the Claimant that the “appropriate order is one which identifies how the Claimant is to be accommodated”, adding that Lancashire County Council “was the relevant local authority prior to the intervention of the arguably unlawful determination by the NAAB. It is by far the most obvious local authority to house him now, as it would no doubt have been liable to do but for the determination of the NAAB”.
This approach to interim relief – where the defendant is the SSHD – may offer a helpful route through in cases where a putative child has been assessed as an adult by the NAAB and then moved by the Home Office away from the local authority area where they have previously been looked after.
Notes
[1] https://www.localgovernmentlawyer.co.uk/child-protection/392-children-protection-news/60231-social-workers-association-calls-again-for-abolition-of-national-age-assessment-board
