G (R on the application of) v ROYAL BOROUGH OF GREENWICH

A local authority considering whether to reassess age must identify what troubled the original assessment and ask whether the new material could lead to a significantly different conclusion. The test is higher than whether the material merely bears on the assessment. It is context-specific and requires the new material to be relevant and material to the original concerns.

The authority must keep an open mind, but may begin from the original assessment and need not approach the matter with an empty mind. It may evaluate the new material cumulatively. Where the original assessment substantially depended on credibility concerns, further evidence must be sufficiently compelling to cross the reassessment threshold. The refusal will be lawful if it falls within the range of reasonable responses.

G, an Angolan national claiming to have been born in 2003, was assessed by the Royal Borough of Greenwich as an adult and was initially accommodated on that basis. Earlier challenges to the assessment were refused on the papers, at an oral permission hearing, and by the Court of Appeal.

G later sought a reassessment based on photographs of a Christian identity card, an expert report concerning Angolan education and the document, opinions from college and Red Cross personnel, and evidence of physical growth. The Council refused, concluding that the material did not satisfy the threshold for reassessment. G sought judicial review, alleging irrationality in the Council’s evaluation of the new material and its decision-making process.

1. The claim was dismissed. The relevant question was whether, in light of the further information, the Council believed that a significantly different conclusion might be reached. This was the higher threshold identified in R (BM) v Hackney LBC [2016] EWHC 3338 and approved in R(F) v Manchester City Council [2019] EWHC 2998. The test required the new information to be considered against the reasoning underlying the original assessment.
2. The original concerns were the education timeline, G’s account of his journey to the United Kingdom and related credibility matters, his presentation, and his English-language skills. The Council was entitled to use those concerns as the framework for evaluating the new evidence.
3. The Christian identity card could potentially have led to a significantly different conclusion if verified. The Council was therefore entitled to seek evidence about its provenance and authenticity. In the absence of independent corroboration, and given the previous credibility findings, it was rational to refuse reassessment on that basis. The Council was not required to ask the Government to investigate the church in Angola.
4. The Council failed properly to engage with Dr Schubert’s evidence that the relevant polytechnic provision could begin at age 14. That error was immaterial. The decisive part of the original education analysis concerned G’s evidence that the youngest pupil in his Year 7 class was 11 or 12 and that he was older. On the Council’s accepted understanding of that evidence, Dr Schubert’s report did not address the central concern.
5. The opinions of persons who had dealt with G could reasonably be treated as evidence of the same type previously considered and could not, alone, justify reassessment. The evidence of three centimetres’ growth over twenty months was also capable of being regarded as insufficiently significant, particularly because age assessment and growth measurement were not precise sciences.
6. The Council considered the further information cumulatively. Although it supported G’s account, the Council was entitled to conclude that, against the original credibility findings, it was not sufficiently compelling to establish that a significantly different conclusion might be reached.

The judgment records that the original age assessment was challenged by judicial review. Permission was refused on the papers by William Davis J, on renewal by Thornton J, and by Andrews LJ in the Court of Appeal on 2 November 2020. The present court dismissed the subsequent challenge to the Council’s refusal to reassess.