AAM was represented by Amanda Weston KC and Jennifer Twite of Garden Court Chambers, instructed by Chessie Aeron-Thomas at Coram Children‘s Legal Centre.
AAM is a young and vulnerable asylum-seeker who had been looked after by the London Borough of Bromley a few weeks short of his 18th birthday. Straight after turning 18, the local authority informed him he had no further rights to obtain support from them and said that they would call the police if he did not leave his accommodation. After some nights spent sleeping on the streets he was housed in a home office hostel for adult men where he was exposed to harmful behaviours and assaulted.
The local authority accepted that it had a discretion to provide AAM with accommodation under section 24A of the Children Act 1989, but had refused to do because he had a roof over his head provided by the Home Office, despite accepting problems with that accommodation. Instead, Bromley argued, it was sufficient for them to support him to complain to the Home Office and advising him he could take legal proceedings against the Home Office.
Jonathan Moffat KC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, found that in deciding whether to provide him with accommodation the local authority were wrong to have taken into account the fact that he was being provided with accommodation by the Home Office under section 95 Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, which, the court found to be residual and legally irrelevant to this determination, following the case of R(O) v LB Barking and Dagenham [2010] EWHC 634 (Admin).
As a result of this case the local authority will have to reassess whether to assist AAM without taking into account the Home Office accommodation.
This ruling will assist any other QYP who is currently being housed in Home Office accommodation, and indeed in other cases where an authority has a discretion to provide accommodation to an individual housed in NASS accommodation.
