Skip to content

Court of appeal rules assessment to determine age of young refugees is unlawful

The Court of Appeal recently ruled that the Home Office's policy on deciding the age of young people seeking asylum is unlawful and must be rewritten, as it fails to ensure that children are not mistakenly treated as adults. In ordering the guidance to be revised, the judge stated that the term 'significantly over 18' was not sufficiently precise as to avoid huge differences in how it was applied, giving rise to the risk that children would be wrongly deemed adults and treated as such in the asylum system.

SLF funded Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit (GMAIU) formed part of the challenge and are quoted in a Guardian article which you can read HERE.