Home Office Age Assessments to be Challenged in High Court (1 April 2026)

Duncan Lewis Solicitors has been granted permission by the High Court to challenge the Home Office’s approach to assessing the age of young asylum seekers, in a case that raises serious concerns about how vulnerable children are treated at the border.

The case involves a Sudanese minor whose age was assessed by Home Office officials shortly after being rescued in UK waters near Dover. Despite being exhausted, distressed and without proper support, he was assessed as an adult based on appearance and demeanour alone.

Following Pre-Action correspondence from Duncan Lewis, he was eventually transferred to supported accommodation and the Local Authority agreed to conduct a full (Merton-compliant) age assessment. However, he was left in adult accommodation for 2 ½ months because of the Home Office’s initial assessment, during which time his mental health deteriorated significantly.

The Claimant’s experience conforms to the pattern of procedural failings in the Home Office’s initial assessment of the age of putative minors arriving in the UK to claim asylum. In July 2025, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration produced a report, following inspection of nine initial age assessments conducted at a site in Dover. Concerns documented in the report included the validity of assessing the age of children in the aftermath of a long and traumatic journey when they have barely slept. Also, the lack of proper explanation to them at its outset of the purpose of an initial age assessment; difficulties with understanding interpreters at interview; and failing to communicate to putative minors the consequences of the decision and the options available to them to challenge the outcome of the assessment where necessary. These failings have also been repeatedly raised by NGOs supporting asylum seekers in recent years, including in reports in 2023 and 2024 by the Helen Bamber Foundation and in 2025 by the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium. Misidentification at initial assessment risks further traumatisation of highly vulnerable unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors and significant detriment, including the risk of being unlawfully detained, accommodated and even criminally prosecuted as adults, deprivation from educational opportunities and heightened protections within the asylum process.

This judicial review challenges the lawfulness of the Home the Home Secretary’s policy as it relates to initial assessment of age, and its application to the Claimant’s case. There are two grounds:

Ground 1 - The Home Secretary’s Policy, Assessing Age, unlawfully fails to direct caseworkers to apply the irreducible, minimal procedural safeguards in the initial assessment of age and, in doing so, ‘inevitably results in some decisions which [breach] Article 8 rights’. These procedural guarantees were clarified by the European Court in the recent cases of Darboe v Italy [2023] and AC v France [2025].  

Ground 2 – The Home Secretary’s failure to apply the irreducible minimum procedural safeguards in the Claimant’s case and thereby breached his Article 8 rights. Taking into account the distress and harm he suffered during assessment and by reason of his subsequent treatment as an adult for 2 ½ months, he is entitled to damages. 

The team working on this challenge consists of Elizabeth Cole, Anya Gardner-Mohammed and Kristen Allison. Counsel instructed are Chris Buttler KC and Zoe McCallum of Matrix Chambers.

Duncan Lewis wants to thank Care4Calais for their support and contributions to the case, Law for Change for their financial backing at its early stages and Becket Bedford of No. 5 Chambers for early advice. We would also like to highlight the extensive research conducted into this issue by the wider sector, including the Helen Bamber Foundation along with the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium.