National Age Assessment Board Decision quashed in landmark judgment

On 27 November 2025 the Upper Tribunal handed down judgment in ALK v Secretary of State for the Home Department and Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council (JR-2025-LON-000694).

It is understood to be the first successful judgment against a National Age Assessment Board Decision.  

The Tribunal made a declaration that that the Applicant was born in 2008 and quashed the National Age Assessment Board Decision which had concluded that he was an adult, born in 2004.

The Applicant, an asylum seeker from Northern Darfur, in Sudan, was found to be a 17-year-old child. The Upper Tribunal Ordered the local authority to provide him with children’s services under the Children Act 1989, and the Secretary of State for the Home Department to process his asylum claim as a child.

The unlawful age assessment decision, which wrongly concluded that ALK was an adult, spanned over 90 pages. It had been conducted by two assessing social workers within the Home Office’s National Age Assessment Board over 5 meetings. 

National Age Assessment Boards were established by Part 4 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 which provides for officials of the Secretary of State for the Home Department (‘SSHD’) to carry out age assessments following a local authority referral. 

The assessment was challenged by way of judicial review. Mike Spencer drafted the grounds on which permission to apply for judicial review was granted.  Catherine Meredith conducted the fact-finding hearing, on 30 September, 1 and 3 October 2025.

Before the Upper Tribunal, it was common ground that the processes brought about by Part 4 of the 2022 Act did not have any impact on the Tribunal’s task or assessment.

The Upper Tribunal recorded a ‘striking feature’ of the case was that it was ‘accepted on all sides’ that the Applicant ‘appears to be young’ (§90). He was also accepted to be vulnerable based on the medical evidence confirming diagnoses of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression arising from traumatic experiences (§40, 82-85, 90).

The Upper Tribunal was ‘unable to place weight on the assessment’ as it was ‘flawed in various fundamental respects’ (§3, 163-64). The assessors had wrongly: 

• ‘gone too far’ in their suspicions of the Applicant’s ID documents including by referring to them as ‘forged’ (§100) – absent evidence to support this. They ‘misunderstood’ and made ‘obvious errors’ regarding the documents (§155-162).
   
• relied on ‘inconsistent’ dates of birth ‘supposedly’ given to the British Transport Police and other officials during various interviews and used these to assert that he had ‘lied’ about his age – despite the circumstances in which the interviews were conducted, errors in transcription/lack of translation (§46, 86-89, 104-125). 
   
• placed weight on their own country research suggesting that the Applicant’s village had been destroyed in 2004, to conclude that he was born in 2004 and without considering evidence that the village may have been rebuilt by 2008 when the Applicant was born (§147-153).
   
• relied on the eruption of wisdom teeth - though at the hearing Counsel for the SSHD accepted that ‘no significant weight’ could be attached to this (§154).
   
• doubted the Applicant’s date of birth given to the Spanish authorities without providing any evidence regarding enquiries made properly or at all (§162).

The Judge found that the Applicant had ‘consistently given his year of birth as 2008’ and ‘there is no reliable evidence to the contrary’ (§125).

The weight of the NAAB decision was ‘further reduced’ as the assessors had failed to actually observe, including in their questioning, the principles regarding the appropriate treatment of minors during age assessment interviews who have suffered a range of traumatic experiences (§163).

The Judge was assisted by the observations of professionals who had worked with the Applicant over time including those supporting him from the Refugee Council and Da’aro Youth Project (§170 -188). 

Catherine Meredith and Michael Spencer represented ALK and were instructed by Alex McMahon and Amir Faizi at Osbornes Solicitors LLP.