AM, R (on the application of) v Sheffield City Council

At the permission stage of a challenge to an age assessment, the court applies two distinct thresholds. For conventional judicial review grounds, permission requires an arguable ground with a realistic prospect of success. For the underlying question of age, the court asks whether the evidence, taken at its highest, could properly succeed at a contested factual hearing.

A local authority may use a brief assessment where it is apparent that the person is over 25, under 18, or where a full assessment is required because the position is unclear. Whether that process is fair, whether reasons are adequate, and whether further enquiries are required are fact-sensitive questions. A separate minded-to procedure is not required whenever assessors reject the age asserted by the person concerned.

The claimant, an Afghan national and unaccompanied asylum seeker, challenged Sheffield City Council’s brief age assessment. The assessment concluded that he was over 25 and therefore not entitled to the authority’s duties towards children. He sought permission for judicial review, including declarations, a quashing order and an order requiring a full, Merton-compliant assessment. He also sought interim relief, including accommodation as a child.

Permission had been refused on the papers. The Administrative Court considered the alleged procedural unfairness and irrationality in the authority’s brief-assessment process and in the claimant’s individual assessment, together with the objective factual issue of his age.

1. Permission refused. The applications for interim relief also failed.
2. For conventional judicial review grounds, the permission-stage question was whether there was an arguable ground with a realistic prospect of success. For the objective question of age, the court applied the threshold identified in R (on the application of Pishtian Karimi) v Sheffield City Council and R (FZ) v Croydon LBC: whether the case, taken at its highest, could properly succeed at a contested factual hearing (paras [4]-[5], [51]).
3. A general challenge to the council’s brief-assessment procedure was misconceived. The form was capable of identifying cases apparently involving a person over 25, a person under 18, or an unclear case requiring a full assessment. Allegations about illegibility, recording of interpretation, fitness to participate, cultural context and further enquiries were matters requiring consideration on the facts of each case, rather than proof of generic procedural unfairness (paras [34]-[39], [41]-[44]).
4. The reasons for the individual assessment were adequately given by reading the over-25 letter together with the brief-enquiry form. The recorded observations of a shaved face, facial hair, acne scarring and adult demeanour sufficiently identified the basis of the conclusion. A fuller explanation of why the case was obvious was not required on the facts (paras [40], [43], [47]-[48]).
5. The council was entitled to take the Home Office assessment into account as part of the factual and procedural background. There was no realistic prospect of establishing that it had placed irrational or improper weight on that assessment or had failed to make its own assessment (paras [38], [45]).
6. A minded-to procedure was not required merely because the assessors rejected the claimant’s asserted age. The claimant had an opportunity to comment on the assessment, and the alleged need for such a procedure based on substantial reliance on the Home Office assessment was not established (para [46]).
7. The claimant’s bare assertion that he was born on 3 May 2006, without evidence or substantial grounds capable of succeeding at a contested factual hearing, did not pass the objective threshold. Interim accommodation relief therefore also failed; in any event, the claimant was over 18 even on his own case by the date of the hearing (paras [51]-[52]).