Latest inspection report finds that decade old concerns about age assessments remain unanswered

The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) has published a report following an inspection of the Home Office’s use of age assessments. The report states that “many of the concerns about policy and practice that have been raised for more than a decade remain unanswered”.

Background: Home Office and assessing age

Age assessments have long straddled child law and immigration law. Local authorities have long been identified as best placed to carry out assessments and they do so primarily to determine whether they owe a duty to look after and accommodate a child. The Association of Director’s of Children’s Services has published non-statutory guidance on carrying out assessments.

However, the Home Office has also been heavily involved in age assessments and policy, particularly in the last 15 years. The main way in which the Home Office engages with assessing the age of young people is at the border. This can include assessing a young person as having a physical appearance and demeanour that suggests they are “significantly over the age of 18”.

This policy has been legally challenged in the past, particularly given poor Home Office practice and the wide discrepancy in assessing age on physical appearance and demeanour alone. However, the Supreme Court found the policy to be lawful in 2021.

Since the Supreme Court decision, there has been a significant uptick in the number of children initially treated as adults, with large numbers being later found to be children following a local authority age assessment. The policy has led to significant safeguarding issues given those children will have been placed in accommodation with adults.

In recent years the National Age Assessment Board has been set up, through section 50 and 51 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. The board is part of the Home Office, and primarily consists of social workers who conduct age assessments upon referral. Social work bodies have raised concerns over the independence of the board.

The Home Office has also sought to codify age assessment practice under the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, but this, along with a new age assessment appeal process, has not yet been brought into practice.

Scientific age assessments

Age assessments by their nature are not certain and there have been a number of attempts by authorities to provide certainty through ‘scientific age assessments’. Other jurisdictions have focused on bone density in the past, and in the UK, dental assessments were a regular occurrence in the 2010s until being discredited and found to be unreliable. Generally, there are significant ethical and accuracy issues with the main scientific methods that have been attempted in the sphere of age assessments.

More recently, the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 empowered the Home Office to make regulations to bring in scientific methods as part of age assessments. They set up a science advisory committee to examine and report on potential methods, which has been previously covered here.

ICIBI inspection report

The ICIBI carried out an inspection from July 2024 to February 2025 of the Home Office’s use of age assessments. This included looking at how the Home Office carry out age decisions at the border, their handling of the age dispute process, and the National Age Assessment Board.

Yet again, the inspector has highlighted the Home Office’s ability to work with others as an issue:

the overall message is that the Home Office should look to work more closely and collaboratively with external stakeholders, including local authorities in England and Wales and their equivalents in Scotland and Northern Ireland, Strategic Migration Partnerships, non-governmental organisations, and should involve others (interpreters, social workers, experts, and practitioners in supporting and providing services for children and young people) as much as possible in designing and delivering its processes

In terms of initial age decisions, a number of issues were found, including poor record keeping and issues with inconsistencies, a lack of training, and poor process. Problems were found with the ‘Statement of Age’ forms – where a young person is asked to sign a document stating they are over 18 as both local authorities and NGOs had provided examples of young people who had felt pressured or had not understood what they were signing.

In terms of the situation following the initial decision, there were issues noted with Home Office data, communication with local authorities and the impact of incorrect initial decisions on the child and local authority. In relation to Home Office initial age assessments that were later overturned, David Bolt said that there was “a surprising lack of curiosity about decisions that were subsequently disputed and overturned, and a prevailing view that there was no learning to take from these later assessments as the processes were too dissimilar”.

The ICIBI was more positive about the National Age Assessment Board in terms of its partnership working, but noted that it needed to get its positioning, messaging and performance right. The inspectorate noted examples of where social workers working in the board were using information from the Home Office to prepare for the age assessment, whereas others say that they deliberately do not do this because of concerns that they will be influenced by previous credibility findings.

Eight recommendations were made (these are set out in full on pages 13 to 14 of the report). The first recommendation was:

Produce a stakeholder map and engagement plan that takes full account of the practical and presentational value of involving external stakeholders (including local authorities and their equivalents in Scotland and Northern Ireland, Strategic Migration Partnerships, Non-Governmental Organisations and others) in the development and delivery of relevant policies and best practice, including but not limited to input into and implementation of each of the recommendations below.

Some of the other recommendations include that guidance is published on the Statement of Age form and process, minimum standards are set for the initial age assessment process, and data is shared with local authorities around dispersal of individuals who have claimed to be children but assessed as significantly over the age of 18

Ministerial statement on Artificial Intelligence/facial recognition

As noted in the ICIBI report, although the Home Secretary has the power to make regulations to specify scientific methods to be used in age assessments, she has yet to do so.

In May 2025, the government noted in their immigration white paper that they would take measures to improve “the robustness of the age assessment process, which includes exploring scientific and technological methods to ensure adults are not wrongly identified as children”. One would hope that they also wish to ensure that children are not wrongly identified as adults but this is not stated explicitly in the white paper.

In a ministerial statement last week, it was announced that the Home Office was likely to pursue Facial Age Estimation using AI technology. They also announced that they were disbanding the science advisory committee that had previously looked at age assessments, although would continue to consult with experts.

What is next?

The Home Office has accepted all the recommendations made by the ICIBI, with various proposed implementation dates. The hope is that implementing these recommendations will improve the system, even if there remain concerns around systemic issues with the Home Office and assessing age.

In terms of scientific age assessments, the scientific advisory committee on age assessments recommended implementing some scientific methods in October 2022, however these were never embedded into age assessment practice.

The committee did consider facial age estimation but noted that further independent research and development was required to improve accuracy and ensure estimation is applicable to demographics of children going through the asylum system. It is yet to be trialled and tested, and the Home Office have noted that they will continue to look at other techniques or alternatives.

Facial Age Estimation will not be introduced immediately. Further work has been commissioned to test and trial the process, with a belief that the technology could be fully integrated into the current age assessment system in 2026. Like other scientific methods, there will be ethical, accuracy and sufficient data considerations as well. Legal challenges seem inevitable.