MAA, R (on the application of) v London Borough of Hounslow

In an age-assessment judicial review, conventional public-law grounds may be subsumed by the underlying factual question. A local authority need only make such inquiries as are reasonable. A full Merton-compliant assessment is not required where the person’s age is clearly outside the area of genuine doubt. In such a clear case, physical appearance and demeanour may, depending on the circumstances, provide a lawful basis for treating the person as an adult.

The absence of an appropriate adult or a minded-to process does not automatically make an assessment unfair. Fairness is case-sensitive and depends on what those procedures would realistically add. At the permission stage, the court must consider the factual material fairly and in the round, taken at its highest, without ignoring countervailing evidence.

The claimant, a Sudanese national who arrived in the United Kingdom as an unaccompanied asylum seeker, challenged Hounslow’s decision to treat him as an adult. He claimed to have been born on 11 April 2006 and argued that the authority had acted irrationally, failed to make further inquiries or reassess him, denied him procedural fairness, and failed the factual permission test in FZ.

The claim was considered at an oral renewal hearing after permission had been refused on the papers. The central issues were whether the public-law grounds were arguable and whether the evidence, taken at its highest, raised a factual issue that could properly succeed before the Upper Tribunal.

1. Permission refused on all five grounds. Interim relief was refused because no substantive claim remained. The claimant was ordered to pay the defendant’s costs of preparing the acknowledgement of service.
2. The permission test required an arguable ground with a realistic prospect of success. The rationality challenges were essentially Wednesbury challenges. The age-assessment process was an application of the Tameside duty to make reasonable inquiries, under which the manner and intensity of inquiry generally remained for the public authority.
3. The court rejected the challenge that the assessments were unlawful merely because they relied substantially on appearance and demeanour. Following HAM and AB, Merton did not impose a technical checklist. Where it is clear that a person is significantly over 18, there is no need for a prolonged or formulaic assessment. The defendant’s trained social workers had met the claimant and concluded that he was plainly an adult rather than a borderline case.
4. The absence of an appropriate adult was not necessarily fatal to fairness. The issue was case-sensitive, and no arguable unfairness arose on these facts. A minded-to process was likewise unnecessary where the dispute principally concerned visual assessment and it was difficult to identify any material benefit that the process would have produced.
5. For the factual challenge, the court had to consider the material carefully, fairly and in the round, taking it at its highest. That did not require the court to disregard countervailing evidence. The claimant’s consistent self-reporting supported credibility but had limited independent evidential weight. Against it stood five broadly consistent assessments, four by trained age assessors. The claim could not properly succeed on that material.

The judgment itself concerns an oral renewal hearing in the Administrative Court after permission had been refused on the papers. Permission was refused on all five grounds at this hearing.