HJ v London Borough of Croydon

A local authority must take reasonable steps to assess the needs of a child in need who is physically within its area. It cannot refuse assessment because another authority may also owe duties, because responsibility between authorities is disputed, or because cooperation and reimbursement arrangements are incomplete. The child’s welfare and immediate needs take priority over later allocation of costs. A preliminary age assessment by another authority does not absolve the authority in whose area the child is present, particularly where the assessment may not comply with basic fairness requirements or the applicable guidance.

HJ, a young Vietnamese woman, was found in circumstances suggestive of exploitation and claimed to be under 18. Greenwich social workers treated her as an adult following a preliminary interview. Croydon subsequently refused on three occasions to assess her under the Children Act 1989, maintaining that Greenwich was responsible under the Pan London Protocol for Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children.

The judicial review concerned Croydon’s refusal on 21 January 2020. The central issues were whether Croydon owed assessment duties to a putative child physically present in its area and whether Greenwich’s preliminary age assessment displaced those duties.

1. Claim allowed. Croydon’s refusal to assess HJ’s needs was unlawful. The relevant question was the legality of Croydon’s refusal, not the ultimate allocation of responsibility or costs between the authorities.
2. Section 17(1) of the Children Act 1989 implicitly requires a local authority to take reasonable steps to assess the needs of any child in its area who appears to be in need. The authorities support a physical-presence approach. More than one authority may owe concurrent duties, and a local authority cannot pass responsibility from one authority to another while the authorities dispute responsibility.
3. The statutory framework prioritises the protection of vulnerable children. Needs should be met first, with redistribution of resources or settlement between authorities addressed afterwards. The absence of effective cooperation or reimbursement arrangements does not remove the duty to assess.
4. It was not a straightforward alternative-remedy case. There was no statutory appeal against a local children’s services authority’s refusal to carry out a child-in-need assessment. HJ’s ability to challenge Greenwich’s age assessment did not answer Croydon’s separate statutory duty.
5. The preliminary assessment by Greenwich did not justify refusal. The material disclosed no clear explanation that HJ understood an age assessment was being undertaken, no recorded appropriate adult, no indication that adverse matters were put to her, and no reasoned treatment of the margin for error or benefit of the doubt. Her tiredness, distress and possible trafficking indicators were also relevant. An age assessment compliant with the applicable case law was therefore required.
6. The court did not determine the trafficking issue under section 51(2) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, because it had not been pleaded as a ground and the evidence had not been prepared on that basis. The trafficking indicators nevertheless ought to have been considered when reviewing the preliminary assessment.