Age assessment challenge dismissed by Court of Appeal

A Sudanese refugee has been unsuccessful in his Court of Appeal challenge to an age assessment by a local authority. The case is R (AI) v West Berkshire Council [2025] EWCA Civ 136.

The appellant is a Sudanese national who claimed asylum in October 2021. On arrival in the UK, he was assigned a date of birth by the Home Office of 20 April 1998 and placed in adult accommodation. The appellant said that his date of birth is 4 August 2004 and West Berkshire Council carried out an age assessment over five meetings in November and December 2021. Following this, the respondent adopted the date of birth that had been assigned by the Home Office.

The appellant challenged that decision by judicial review lodged on 31 May 2022 and permission was granted in July 2022. The proceedings were then transferred to the Upper Tribunal for a fact finding hearing to take place. The appellant was granted asylum on 28 October 2023 but apparently only informed of this on 8 November 2024 (I hope this is a typo).

The tribunal accepted that the assessment carried out by the respondent was “heavily, and unduly influenced, by the assessors’ view of the applicant’s physical appearance” however there were discrepancies in the appellant’s account that the judge considered could not be explained by his vulnerability as a young refugee or translation errors.

The appellant appealed the decision to the Court of Appeal on the ground “that the Judge failed to give reasons for finding that (a) the Appellant was an adult when he arrived in the UK and (b) the Appellant’s date of birth was 20 April 1998”. He argued that “even if the Judge gave adequate reasons for concluding that the Appellant was an adult when he entered the UK, he gave no reasons for finding that he was born on 20 April 1998”.

The Court of Appeal said:

39. … It is clear from the way in which the case was presented to the UT that there was a binary issue presented to it, namely whether the age asserted by the Appellant should be accepted or whether it should be that attributed by the Home Office and adopted by the Respondent. Although in principle it is open to a tribunal in age assessment cases to find some different date, not least because its task is inquisitorial rather than adversarial, there is no duty upon it to do so. Everything will depend on the particular circumstances of the case and what are in truth the material issues before the tribunal in a particular case.
40. This helps to explain why the Judge concentrated as much as he did, in his analysis of the evidence, on the question whether the Appellant was to be relied upon as a credible witness, in particular in relation to the question of his age.

The court also said that “the reality of this case was that the Appellant had lied to the UT in respect of the crucial issue of his date of birth” and noted that there had been an unchallenged finding of fact that the appellant had been to school in Sudan which would have added years to his claimed age.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal. 

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