Prenga, R (on the application of) v London Borough of Barnet

In a disputed age-assessment claim, the court must decide for itself whether the claimant is a child. Documentary evidence of age is important but is not necessarily conclusive. The court may assess its reliability against the claimant’s account, conduct, credibility, travel history, educational history and other available evidence. A local authority may reconsider an assessment when significant new material is produced. Where the evidence is carefully and thoroughly evaluated, the court may uphold the conclusion that the claimant is over 18 and refuse declaratory relief.

The claimant, an Albanian national who claimed to have been born in December 1992, sought judicial review of an age assessment by the London Borough of Barnet. The authority had concluded, after an initial and a further assessment, that he was born in December 1990 and was therefore over 18. The claimant relied principally on Albanian birth, school and family-feud documents. His solicitors ceased acting before the hearing, and he did not attend or provide a skeleton argument. The central issues were whether the court should proceed in his absence and whether, on the evidence, he was a child for the purposes of the relevant social-services duties.

1. The application was properly determined in the claimant’s absence. He had not expressly withdrawn it, and the public interest required certainty and finality after substantial work by the local authority.
2. Following R (on Application of A) v London Borough of Croydon and R (on Application of M) v London Borough of Lambeth [2009] UKSC 8, the question whether a person is a child is for the court to determine. The court therefore assessed the evidence for itself.
3. The Albanian documents did not establish the claimed date of birth. The birth certificate was obtained shortly before travel, contained an apparently outdated photograph, and was unsupported by evidence about the underlying register. The school letter was materially weakened by the claimant’s lie that the person who posted it was unrelated to him, when that person was his father and a teacher at the school.
4. The claimant’s own accounts provided several independent reasons for concluding that he was 16 when he left school in 2007 and 18 when he arrived in the United Kingdom. His inconsistent accounts of family circumstances, travel and earlier asylum claims further undermined his credibility and reliability.
5. The authority had conducted a careful and thorough assessment, had reopened the matter in light of the new documents, and was entitled to reach its conclusion. The court agreed that the claimant was over 18 and that December 1990 was his accurate year of birth.
6. The judicial-review application was dismissed and the declaration that the claimant was under 18 was refused. An anonymity order was discharged because the welfare justification applicable to children no longer applied. The claimant was ordered to pay the council’s costs. Costs incurred while he had public funding were not to be enforced without leave or full assessment under section 11 of the Access to Justice Act 1999.