JR-2025-LON-000694

• Status of case: Unreported
• Hearing date: 3 Oct 2025
• Promulgation date: 27 Nov 2025
• Publication date: 5 Dec 2025
• Last updated on: 5 Dec 2025

The decision

JR-2025-LON-000694

In the Upper Tribunal
(Immigration and Asylum Chamber)
Judicial Review


In the matter of an application for Judicial Review


The King on the application of


ALK



Applicant

and





Secretary of State for the Home Department

First Respondent
and

Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council
Second Respondent

ORDER



BEFORE Upper Tribunal Judge Blundell

HAVING considered all documents lodged and having heard Ms. C. Meredith of counsel, instructed by Osbornes Law for the Applicant and Ms. A. Williams of counsel, instructed by the Government Legal Department for the First Respondent at a hearing held on 30 September, 1 and 3 October 2025, the Second Respondent not being represented by Counsel at the hearing.

IT IS DECLARED THAT:

1. The Applicant’s date of birth is 26 April 2008.

IT IS ORDERED THAT:

2. The Applicant’s claim for judicial review is allowed for the reasons in the judgment. 

3. The First and Second Respondents shall hereafter treat the Applicant in accordance with his declared age of 26 April 2008 (as Declared at paragraph 1) and:

(a) the Second Respondent shall provide him with accommodation, support and services on that basis in accordance with the Children Act 1989.

(b) the First Respondent shall treat the Claimant as having made an asylum claim as a child on that basis for relevant immigration purposes including in processing and determining his asylum claim in accordance with Part 11 Immigration Rules and her relevant polices.

4. The First Respondent’s age assessment dated 10 July 2024 is quashed.
  
5. The order for anonymity made by the Administrative Court remains in force. 


6. Any further submissions as to costs shall be made in writing by 4pm on 28 November.

7. Permission to appeal is refused because it was not sought and there is in any event no arguable legal error in the judgment.

Signed: Mark Blundell

Upper Tribunal Judge Blundell


Dated: 26 November 2025


The date on which this order was sent is given below


For completion by the Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber

Sent / Handed to the applicant, respondent and any interested party / the applicant's, respondent’s and any interested party’s solicitors on (date): 27/11/2025

Solicitors:
Ref No.
Home Office Ref:


Notification of appeal rights

A decision by the Upper Tribunal on an application for judicial review is a decision that disposes of proceedings.

A party may appeal against such a decision to the Court of Appeal on a point of law only. Any party who wishes to appeal should apply to the Upper Tribunal for permission, at the hearing at which the decision is given. If no application is made, the Tribunal must nonetheless consider at the hearing whether to give or refuse permission to appeal (rule 44(4B) of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008).

If the Tribunal refuses permission, either in response to an application or by virtue of rule 44(4B), then the party wishing to appeal can apply for permission from the Court of Appeal itself. This must be done by filing an appellant’s notice with the Civil Appeals Office of the Court of Appeal within 28 days of the date the Tribunal’s decision on permission to appeal was sent (Civil Procedure Rules Practice Direction 52D 3.3).



Case No: JR-2025-LON-000694
IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
(IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER)
Field House,
Breams Buildings
London, EC4A 1WR

26 November 2025

Before:

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BLUNDELL

_______________________

Between:

THE KING on the application of ALK
Applicant
- and -

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
First Respondent
and

WALSALL METROPOLITAN BOROUGH COUNCIL
Second Respondent
_______________________

Catherine Meredith
(instructed by Osbornes Solicitors LLP) for the applicant

Amelia Williams
(instructed by the Government Legal Department) for the first respondent

The second respondent was not represented

Hearing dates: 30 September, 1 and 3 October 2025
_______________________

J U D G M E N T
_______________________

JUDGE BLUNDELL:

1. The applicant is an asylum seeker from Northern Darfur in Sudan. He claims that his date of birth is 26 April 2008. The Secretary of State’s National Age Assessment Board (“NAAB”) concluded that he was an adult who was born on or around 1 January 2004.

2. I find that the applicant was born on 26 April 2008 and that the first respondent’s decision must be quashed. It will be necessary to explain the reasons for those conclusions at some length but they may be summarised quite shortly.

3. Firstly, I do not consider that any weight can properly be attached to the first respondent’s assessment because it is flawed in various fundamental respects. Secondly, whilst the applicant’s oral and documentary evidence suffers from some deficiencies, I consider that weight can properly be given to it. Thirdly, I consider that the observations of professional people who have seen the applicant interacting with other young people are deserving of real weight and point towards him being of the age claimed.

The Applicant’s Version of Events

4. The factual background in this case is substantially in dispute between the parties. It assists, however, to set out the applicant’s version of events at the outset. I have taken what follows largely from the chronologies which appear in the skeleton arguments from Ms Meredith, Ms Williams and Jonathan Auburn KC, who previously represented the second respondent at an interim relief hearing before UTJ Mandalia on 23 June 2025.

Life in Sudan

5. The applicant states that he was born on 26 April 2008, in a village called Naro in North Darfur. He is a member of the Tunjur tribe. His family are Muslims. He speaks Arabic, in the Darfurian dialect. He also speaks some of his mother’s tribal language, Fur.

6. Naro village was attacked and destroyed by the Janjaweed militia when the applicant was a baby. The applicant and his family were displaced to a camp for internally displaced persons (“IDP”) in Fato Borno, near Kutum in North Darfur. The residents of the camp were assisted by the United Nations African Mission in Darfur (“UNAMID”) and the World Food Programme.

7. The applicant’s four younger brothers were born in the camp, although he does not know their dates of birth. His father had a farm outside the camp where he grew vegetables for sale. The applicant visited his father there but did not work on the farm.

8. The applicant says that he attended school in the Fato Borno camp. The extent of his education and the point at which it finished is in dispute but the applicant states that he received a number of years of education within the camp. He states that his education was significantly disrupted by school closure on account of the covid pandemic and other factors.

9. The applicant states that his birthday was not celebrated as such but that his father would tell him every year that it was his birthday and that he was another year older. The applicant states that he became conscious of his birthday when there was a round of vaccinations at his school. His date of birth was written down by a teacher and he memorised it. He was ten years old at the time.

10. Shortly after the applicant had seen his date of birth written down, his mother showed him two identity documents which play a part in these proceedings. The first is a Civil Registration Certificate (“CRC”) which was issued by the Sudanese Ministry of Interior on 29 January 2015 and gives his full name, his date of birth and his eleven digit national ID number, amongst other details. The second is an undated “displacement card”, which gives the applicant’s name and date of birth and states that he was displaced from Naro to Fato Borno on 4 July 2008.

11. When the applicant was aged 11, he and other children were kidnapped and ill-treated by the Janjaweed militia. The applicant was released after several weeks because he became seriously ill.

Travel From Sudan

12. In early 2022, the applicant’s father had a dispute over the family farm with the Janjaweed militia. The applicant left Sudan with his father and his uncle in February 2022. They took their ID documents with them. The applicant’s father was sadly killed on the first day of the journey but the applicant and his uncle managed to escape to the mountains. They continued their journey to Libya. The applicant’s uncle held his ID documents.

13. The applicant and his uncle stayed in a village called Qatrun in the Murzuq district of Southern Libya. He was supported by his uncle. He was able to speak to his mother on the telephone when they were in Libya. Whilst they were there, the building in which they were staying was raided by the Libyan authorities and the applicant’s uncle was detained as an illegal entrant.

14. The applicant was left to fend for himself in Libya. He sold his uncle’s mobile phone in order to survive. He was subsequently approached by a man who stated untruthfully that he knew his uncle. The applicant went with this man and was transported to northwestern Libya, near the Algerian border, where he was forced to work on the man’s farm.

15. The applicant left the farm when the man was absent for Eid ul-Adha in July 2022. He met a group of Sudanese men who were travelling to Algeria on foot and he travelled with them before being accosted and beaten by border guards as they tried to cross the border. The applicant escaped and managed to cross the border, after which he was reunited the boys in a desert town called Debdeb in Algeria. The applicant stayed with this group and was fed by them for around a month, after which they set off for Morocco.

16. At the border between Algeria and Morocco, the applicant was chased and caught by border guards for a second time. On this occasion, he was severely beaten and suffered injuries, particularly to his back, and was hospitalised. After being discharged from the hospital, he recovered at a church in the city of Oujda. The church transferred him to another church in Casablanca. He spent about four months in total in Morocco, much of which was spent sleeping rough and depending on the charity of various organisations. He eventually paid someone 100 dinars (approximately £8) to take him to a town (Fnideq) on the Spanish border, where he scaled the border fence and found himself in the autonomous Spanish city of Ceuta.

17. The applicant was detained by the police in Ceuta. He gave his details and his fingerprints. He does not know whether he claimed asylum in Ceuta, where he was placed in children’s accommodation which was provided by the Red Cross. From Ceuta, the applicant was taken to mainland Spain. He was assigned a social worker (a “trabajodora”) and enrolled in a school. He was offered a choice between a foster placement or remaining in children’s accommodation and he chose the latter option because he had made friends there. In total, the applicant says that he spent four months in Spanish territory, half of which was in Ceuta, half of which was in Madrid.

18. The applicant then left Spain with his friend and his friend’s older brother. He chose to do so, he says, because he experienced racism in Spain. They travelled to France and went to Calais, although the applicant maintains that they had not at that stage set their sights on the UK. They lived in tents and were dependent on charity once again. The applicant states that they were “constantly harassed” by the French authorities and that he was pepper sprayed on two of the eight or nine occasions that he tried to enter the UK by concealing himself in a lorry without the driver’s knowledge.

In the United Kingdom

19. The applicant succeeded in entering the UK in that way on 26 May 2023. He states that the lorry stopped at a petrol station and he exited. The driver saw him and gave him some money in the hope that he would leave more quickly. The applicant states that he then wandered around for around two hours before he found himself at King’s Cross Station in London. He then presented himself to the British Transport Police (“BTP”). His date of birth was recorded by the police as being 26 April 2009.

20. The BTP referred the applicant to the London Borough of Camden’s Social Services department and he was placed into foster care on the same day.

21. The applicant made an application to claim asylum, which he did on 21 June 2023. He was served with various notices, one of which was a notice to an illegal entrant. On the same date, the applicant is recorded as having told a social worker in Camden that his date of birth was actually 26 April 2007. That is the date of birth which is recorded on the notices from the Home Office. A note from Camden Social Services on 28 June 2023 recorded that no age assessment was required because the applicant’s “presentation, body language, body posture and size of his frame” were “in line with his claimed age.”

22. Camden arranged for responsibility for the applicant’s care to be transferred via the National Transfer Scheme and a referral to Walsall was accepted with an agreed transfer date of 27 July 2023. On or about 20 July 2023, the applicant produced to Camden Social Services an electronic image of his CRC, which showed a date of birth of 26 April 2008. (The applicant states that this document was sent to him by WhatsApp by a man called Abdul Latif, who had obtained them from his uncle.) Camden did not accept that to be his date of birth, and continued to treat him as though he had been born in 2007. He was formally transferred to Walsall on 28 July 2023.

23. The applicant left his accommodation in Walsall and returned to London on three occasions between 28 August and 13 September 2023. He stated that he was unsafe in Walsall and that he had friends in London. He was eventually accommodated in South West London as a result of concerns over his safety.

24. On 19 September 2023, the applicant presented the IDP card to his social worker in Walsall. This document was also sent to him by Abdul Latif via WhatsApp.

25. In October and November 2023, Walsall conducted an age assessment which concluded that the applicant was an adult with a date of birth of 12 January 1999. (The applicant is said to have given that date of birth when attending the Accident and Emergency department of Walsall Manor Hospital on 7 September 2023). That assessment was withdrawn on receipt of a Letter Before Action.

26. A further assessment was undertaken by Walsall and, on 16 January 2024, it maintained its initial assessment that the applicant was 24 years old, with a date of birth of 12 January 1999.

27. At the end of January 2024, however, Walsall agreed to accommodate the applicant in the Midlands area pending a fresh age assessment which was to be undertaken by the first respondent’s NAAB.

The First Respondent’s Age Assessment

28. The age assessment by the first respondent took place on 28 March, 2 and 11 April, 2 May and 17 June 2024. The two assessors were from the NAAB, which was established as a result of Part 4 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which makes provision for a local authority to refer an age disputed person to a designated person for an age assessment. By s49(2) of the same Act, a designated person is an official of the Secretary of State who is designated by her to conduct such age assessments.

29. The lead assessor was Ken Ambat. He has worked with asylum seekers and refugees since 2000, initially in an unqualified role. He qualified as a social worker in 2005, with a first class degree from the University of Northampton. Since then, he was worked for several local authorities including Kent, Croydon and Solihull. Mr Ambat joined NAAB in September 2023 and completed specialist training modules prior to becoming a designated member. Mr Ambat says in the report that his two decades of experience have enabled him to work with young people from diverse backgrounds, and that he has developed a degree of “cultural competence” which enables him to understand “the lived experience of the young people” with whom he works.

30. The second assessor was Sukhvinder Kaur. She qualified in 2001, with a Postgraduate Diploma in Social Work from the University of Exeter. She is a registered social worker who has worked extensively in statutory children’s services across the country. In 2021, she worked in Leicestershire County Council’s Looked After Children’s Service, as part of a specialist team which supported Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (“UASC”). She has worked with UASC from all over the world, and has conducted a number of age assessments. She has been contracted by the Home Office as part of NAAB since 2023, and received specialist training on Merton-compliant age assessments.

31. The assessment and its appendices span ninety pages in the consolidated bundle and I have obviously considered it in detail. Ms Williams cautioned in her submissions against relying on merely the summary of conclusions at the end of the document. Whilst I do not propose to confine my analysis to that summary, and will address the more detailed reasons given in the full assessment, the summary provides a convenient precis of the reasons and it might usefully be reproduced in full at this stage of my judgment. This extract is reproduced verbatim, although I have anonymised the applicant and numbered the paragraphs which contain the key reasoning for ease of subsequent reference.

CONCLUSION

Having considered all the available evidence and information gathered during the assessment, and having observed [ALK] over five separate occasions, the assessors find that, on the balance of probabilities, it is more likely that [ALK] is older than his asserted age for the following reasons:

(1) His account of the circumstances that led to him arriving at Fata Borno as an infant is persuasive and the objective evidence obtained during this assessment confirms the date of the attack on his former home village as having occurred in February 2004. This fact is considered to carry perhaps the greatest weight in the balancing exercise assessors completed before arriving at this decision. [ALK]’s insistence that it is for the assessors to establish that a further attack occurred in 2008 as claimed is refuted by the objective evidence. Noro has not been inhabited since 2004.

(2) The documentation relied upon by [ALK] cannot be accorded any weight due to the opinions expressed by NDFU and UNHCR, which are supported by the present assessors' analysis of provenance and credibility.

(3) [ALK] has not provided sufficient information to the UK authorities to enable retrieval of his immigration records from Spain. This is seen as affecting his overall credibility and highly suggestive that he was relying upon an alternate name and/or date of birth at that time.

(4) [ALK]’s narrative around his final years in education and the interruptions to education revealed in our initial Minded to Meeting interview do not logically fit with either the objective evidence around the situation in Sudan at the relevant time or the impact that this additional year has on previously relied upon timelines based upon his time in education. The conclusion from the assessors’ perspective is that his account may be accurate but the dates he offers for the events in question are less persuasive for many obvious reasons.

(5) [ALK]’s apparent ‘connectedness’ has been discussed in this report. Assessors were not convinced by [ALK]'s account of his difficulties contacting his mother and her brother, his uncle, whilst maintaining communication with a family friend living in a refugee camp in Rwanda and his testimony on these matters was felt to lack credibility. Numbers have been lost. Phones have been replaced. Assessors believe that [ALK] may well have exaggerated the communication problems he reported to assessors and has also sought to conceal his current level of communication with relatives in Sudan. [ALK] has confirmed that he was in contact with a male known as ‘Mustafa’ post arrival in the UK but has not explained why this is the only person he can contact despite the lack of internet and the difficulties with networks in Sudan. The motivation to do so is expected and familiar to the assessors but, if correctly identified as withholding of information, must be viewed alongside [ALK]’s statements as to why he cannot obtain his UNHCR URN.

(6) The various opinions of others who may have spent more time with [ALK] than the present assessors have been fully considered and weighted accordingly in the present assessment. This outcome is not based upon subjective opinion. As has been mentioned previously this assessment process has been largely based upon seeking objective evidence to support [ALK]’s related social history. Unfortunately, the assessors research casts significant doubt on [ALK]’s claimed age and the time of his departure from Fata Borno.

(7) Some of the information provided by [ALK] on 17.06.24 directly conflicts with what has been recorded to date. [ALK] now seeks to place the blame for any apparent inconsistencies in his narrative on a combination of factors. [ALK] alleges that present and previous social workers have fabricated aspects of his oral history, and further alleges that any apparent confusion on his part in relation to his age when he first arrived were entirely the fault of interpreters.

Present assessors have considered the applicability of the benefit of doubt principal within the current assessment and have concluded by agreeing that [ALK]’s likely age has been established in a logical manner, informed by his social history and the totality of the evidence considered during this assessment. As there is an absence of doubt in the present case the assessors do not believe this safeguard applies due to the circumstances of this case i.e., the objective evidence.

Both assessing social workers are specifically trained and have acquired a skill set that has been developed over several years, not only in age assessment but through direct work with young adults and children, including those from [ALK]'s ethnicity and surrounding regions. Furthermore, the lead Assessor has substantive experience of working with migrant children from their entry to the UK as children and seeing their journey through to adulthood and into care leavers services and both assessors are therefore, sufficiently qualified to make this decision.

32. The decision was provided to the applicant at an “outcomes meeting” which took place on 10 July 2024. That is the decision under challenge. Pre-action correspondence did not persuade the first respondent to alter her stance and the application for judicial review was lodged at the Administrative Court on 16 October 2024.

The Application for Judicial Review

33. The grounds for judicial review were settled by Michael Spencer of counsel and made clear that there was a single overarching ground of challenge, which was that the first respondent’s decision was wrong. The grounds undertook a detailed analysis of the evidence which militated for and against the applicant’s claimed age before summarising five key points. Given the continued relevance of those points before me, it is instructive to set them out in summary form.

34. The first point noted that the dispute as to age fell within the margin of error, given the well-recognised difficulty in determining age within the range 16-20. It was submitted, secondly, that the applicant had given a credible and detailed account which was capable of belief, including a plausible explanation for any discrepancies. Thirdly, the grounds noted that the majority of the professionals who had encountered the applicant considered that he was the age he had claimed to be. Fourthly, it was submitted that the ID documents supported the applicant’s claimed age. Finally, it was submitted that the assessors had relied on country evidence which was incomplete or seriously open to doubt.

35. On 3 March 2025, permission was granted by David Pittaway KC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge. In granting permission, he stated that he was not satisfied that this was a case in which the factual case, taken at its highest, could not properly succeed at a contested fact-finding hearing. He ordered that the case be transferred to the Upper Tribunal.

The Fact-Finding Proceedings in the Upper Tribunal

34. The papers in this case are voluminous. There is a core bundle of 878 pages and a supplementary bundle which runs to 1084 pages. There is also an agreed authorities bundle of 831 pages, containing no fewer than 29 decided cases, together with relevant guidance and statutory provisions. A further bundle of 51 pages was filed by the applicant’s solicitors after the hearing, without objection from the first respondent.

36. Ms Meredith and Ms Williams filed detailed skeleton arguments in accordance with the directions made by UTJ Mandalia at the case management hearing. I will refer to their skeleton arguments insofar as it is necessary to do so, since (as Ms Williams noted in her skeleton argument) much of the case turns on my assessment of the witness evidence, including that which was given by the applicant himself over the whole of the first day of the hearing and part of the second.

37. I also heard from three individuals who have seen and worked with the applicant since he arrived in the United Kingdom: Afnan Khalid, Yorsalem Feseha and Sarah Robson, each of whom gave evidence in support of the applicant’s case. Sections 3 and 4 of the core bundle contain statements and communications from other people who have encountered the applicant since he came to the United Kingdom. Those individuals did not give oral evidence and I will return to their written evidence in due course.

38. There are also three experts in this case. None of them gave oral evidence but they have provided detailed reports. The first is Peter Verney, a well known expert on Sudan who has given evidence in country guidance cases. He provided a report on the applicant’s account of events in Sudan. He also commented on the applicant’s documents. The second is Alice Rogers, a Psychologist, whose report concerns the applicant’s mental health. The third is Dr Samuel Bekalo, a Research and Development Fellow with considerable experience of East Africa and the Horn of Africa, who was called upon to express his opinion on the applicant’s identity documents.

39. In accordance with the order from UTJ Mandalia, there was no cross examination of the assessing social workers but there is a joint statement from the two assessors, Mr Ambat and Ms Kaur, and a statement from one of the second respondent’s assessors, Ms Suri.

40. It was agreed in advance of the hearing that the applicant was to be treated as a vulnerable witness in accordance with Ms Rogers’ report, which details his vulnerability as a result of his depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, amongst other matters. The parties had also agreed a set of ground rules for the hearing, although that had unfortunately not reached me at the outset. The hearing was conducted essentially in accordance with those ground rules, and I am grateful in particular to Ms Williams, who evidently took care to ensure that her extensive cross-examination was expressed in a way which the applicant was able to follow. I should perhaps note that the parties had agreed that there would be breaks every fifteen minutes during the applicant’s oral evidence. There was some departure from that, without objection from Ms Meredith, because it was appropriate, where possible, to complete “themes” within the cross examination, so as to ensure that the applicant remained focused on the subject in hand. Where that was necessary, I checked with the applicant that he was prepared to continue until the end of the theme in question. He was usually content to do so. When he was not, he was given a break.

41. I have recorded at the start of this judgment that the second respondent was not represented. Two staff from Walsall did attend, however. They were Ms Suri, one of the assessors, and Mr Caville, a manager in the department. Very little notice of their attendance had been given and Ms Meredith raised an objection to their being in the hearing room whilst the applicant gave evidence. She explained that the applicant had reacted adversely when he learned that Ms Suri was present. There was reference to him shaking, and Ms Meredith submitted that I should exclude Ms Suri from the hearing room so as to ensure that the applicant’s evidence was not affected by her presence.

42. Ms Suri and Mr Caville were present in the hearing room when Ms Meredith made that application. Rather than considering whether to exercise my power to exclude one or both of them, I asked them to consider for themselves whether it was appropriate to remain, given what had been said about the applicant’s reaction to their presence. They returned after five minutes. Mr Caville informed me that they had decided that Ms Suri would leave the hearing room of her own volition but that he wished to remain. Ms Meredith, having taken further instructions on the point, confirmed that this was acceptable to the applicant, as he had not previously met Mr Caville.

43. This is to be a lengthy judgment and I do not intend to make it any lengthier by attempting to summarise the applicant’s two witness statements, or by setting out a summary of two days’ worth of oral evidence. I will instead refer to the evidence insofar as it is necessary to do so to explain my findings of fact.

Submissions

44. Ms Williams submitted that the applicant’s account of his age was untrue even when proper account was taken of his accepted vulnerability. She identified six areas of concern, which may be summarised as follows.

45. Ms Williams submitted firstly that the applicant’s evidence about the identity documents had been inconsistent. He had said in oral evidence that both documents had been sent at the same time whereas the documentary evidence suggested that the CRC and the IDP card had been provided to the local authority at different times. The way in which he had obtained those documents was also inconsistent; one version was that he had found the documents on an old email, the other was that they had been sent to him by Abdul Latif on request. The applicant’s demeanour had changed when these problems were put to him in cross-examination. Nothing said in re-examination about the applicant being attacked in the Midlands and his phone being damaged served to overcome these difficulties.

46. Secondly, it was submitted for the first respondent that the applicant had failed to provide any adequate explanation for the fact that his date of birth had been recorded by the BTP as being in 2009. He said in his witness statement that they had asked him to point at numbers, whereas he said in oral evidence that he had signed numbers using his fingers. The 2009 date of birth had been confirmed when the applicant spoke with Camden social services, but he had changed it to 2007 subsequently. In doing so, he had told social services that he had lied to the police. The applicant had obfuscated when confronted with these records in cross-examination because he knew that they would cause him a problem. The explanations in his witness statement and in his oral evidence did not hold water and it was notable that he had not persisted in the suggestion that he had added a year for the time he had spent in utero. The applicant’s date of birth had always been recorded as 26 April, it was only the year that had changed when the applicant had changed his mind, and it was only when he presented the ID documents that he said that he had been born in 2008.

47. Thirdly, the applicant had given discrepant accounts of his schooling. He had said that his schooling had been disrupted by the pandemic, a civil uprising and his kidnapping by the Janjaweed. In his statement, he said that the disruption had been between years four and five but he had referred in his oral evidence to disruption in years five and six. That did not accord with what he had said to Camden in June 2023. When confronted with the point in cross-examination, the applicant had failed to give a clear explanation, stating variously that the disruption was in Y4/Y5 and in Y5/Y6. This suggested that the applicant was older and further through his schooling when he left Sudan.

48. Fourthly, the account of the journey from Sudan to the UK was seriously problematic. He said that he had spent fifteen months travelling. The age assessment referred to various difficulties with that account. The nub of the point was that the applicant claimed to have been a fourteen year old child when he left Sudan, yet he had managed to travel from the East of Africa to the UK without any money, dependent throughout on the charity of others. The entire account was unlikely, particularly the applicant’s ability to attach himself to others who were willing to assist him for significant distances and over significant periods for free.

49. Fifthly, the applicant’s account of his time in Spain had not been substantiated by enquiries made by the first respondent or his own representatives. (Ms Williams accepted, however, that an enquiry had indeed been made by the applicant’s solicitors and no response has been received. She also accepted that there was no documentary evidence to support the claim that the first respondent had made enquiries with the Spanish authorities.) She submitted that the applicant had in any event given conflicting accounts of whether he had claimed asylum in Spain.

50. Sixthly, Ms Williams submitted that the applicant’s account of traveling through London for two hours or so, only to arrive at King’s Cross station, was unreliable. He had no directions and no map, and it was not credible that he had been able to find his way there.

51. Ms Williams submitted that the NAAB assessment was deserving of weight. It had been compiled by experienced social workers who were best placed to make the assessment. I asked Ms Williams about the social workers’ reliance on the eruption of the applicant’s wisdom teeth, which was a point which concerned me as a result of R (on the application of ZM and SK) v The London Borough of Croydon (Dental age assessment) [2016] UKUT 559 (IAC); [2017] Imm AR 459. Ms Williams accepted that it would not be proper to place significant weight on that point. She also accepted, as had the assessors, that the applicant looks young. The assessment provided extensive reasons for reaching the conclusion that it did, however.

52. Ms Williams submitted that the public law challenges to the first respondent’s assessment came to nought. Reasonable enquiries had been made before the decision was taken and the respondent had discharged her Secretary of State for Education and Science v Tameside MBC [1977] 1 AC 1014 obligations. The “minded to” process was adequate and lawful when it was considered as a whole. The benefit of the doubt principle had been considered and applied correctly. The margin of error did not assist the applicant; the role of the assessors was to reach a view, which they had.

53. In the first respondent’s submission, the expert evidence was of limited assistance. Mr Verney agreed that Naro village was destroyed in 2004, as reported by Human Rights Watch. The dispute was whether it had been rebuilt thereafter, such that the applicant and his parents could have re-inhabited it before being displaced once more in 2008. Mr Verney pointed to nothing tangible to show that this was the case. The assessors had responded to the point in their joint statement.

54. The CRC and IDP cards were of limited weight when considered in the round alongside the other difficulties with the evidence. Mr Verney and Dr Bekalu were of limited assistance in this regard. Ms Rogers had strayed outside her expertise, although it was accepted that her opinion in relation to the applicant’s mental health carried weight.

55. As for the evidence from those who had observed the applicant, Ms Williams accepted by reference to R (on the application of AM) v Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council (AAJR) [2012] UKUT 00118 (IAC) that such observations could in principle be of assistance. In the instant case, however, she submitted that only limited if any assistance could be derived from the evidence of Ms Khalid, Ms Feseha and Ms Robson.

56. Ms Khalid had had very little interaction with the applicant. She based her opinion on his clothing and appearance. She had noted that the applicant needed assistance with a bus ticket but overlooked that he had previously travelled to London on his own.

57. Ms Feseha had also known the applicant for a limited time. She had no age assessment training. She attached significance to the applicant’s inability to manage his emotions but it was clear that there were other reasons for that. His excitement at clothes shopping and his reference to adults as “big people” took matters no further.

58. Ms Robson attached weight to the applicant’s interactions with other youths whilst he was playing football. The evidence appeared to show that he gravitated towards other Sudanese people, as one might expect. Even if her evidence was deserving of some weight, it was not sufficient to displace the raft of other concerns expressed.

59. Those who had not attended to give oral evidence had not had it tested and limited weight should be given to that evidence as a result.

60. Ms Williams completed her submissions before midday. Ms Meredith, however, took the rest of the day, and I intend to set out a less fulsome account of those submissions. It is unnecessary to attempt a more comprehensive precis.

61. Ms Meredith invited me to find that the applicant’s date of birth was 26 April 2008 and to quash the first respondent’s decision. She submitted that weight could properly be placed on the applicant’s testimony and on the documents he had adduced. The expert evidence was also deserving of weight.

62. It was irrelevant that the decision was taken by the NAAB; the decision was still for the tribunal and the standard remained the balance of probabilities. It was agreed that the applicant was a vulnerable witness and all that had happened in the case was to be evaluated with that in mind. He had not been treated in that way in the NAAB assessment despite the presence of medical evidence. His account had been consistent in many respects, and the points made by Ms Williams did not undermine the account; they were simply irrelevant to the issues in the case. It was notable that Ms Williams had taken different points than the assessors.

63. Ms Meredith submitted that there was nothing in the point about the provision of the identity documents. There were good reasons why the applicant had not disclosed the documents more promptly. He had been told not to do so and his phone had been damaged. The point that the two documents had not been disclosed at the same time had not featured in the first respondent’s decision, and it was insignificant in any event; the applicant had thought that the CRC would suffice. The evidence did not establish any discrepancy in the way in which the applicant had found or received the documents.

64. As for the point about the applicant changing his date of birth from 2009 to 2007 and finally to 2008, the evidence was simply insufficient to establish any difficulty. There was no contemporaneous record from the BTP officer to show that the applicant had said that his year of birth was 2009 and the potential for misunderstanding or mistranslation was obvious. There were other glaring errors with the records at that time, not least of which was the suggestion that the applicant was female. The record of the event in which the applicant was said to have changed his year of birth to 2007 was seriously flawed. The applicant had been “baffled” by the document, and rightly so. No official interpreter had been present at either meeting. Ms Williams had submitted that the applicant’s demeanour had changed but that was not a matter on which weight could properly be placed. Settled principles about the weight which could be attached to asylum screening interviews applied a fortiori in this context.

65. Nor could any weight be attached to the various points made by the first respondent about the applicant’s schooling. His account had been essentially consistent. He had not said that a year should be added to his date of birth due to gestation; this had been a confusion on the part of the assessors. The applicant had stated that he knew his date of birth for a very specific reason.

66. The applicant’s account of his journey was a credible one, and nothing said in Ms Williams’ fourth submission suggested otherwise. The submission was merely based on plausibility but it was entirely plausible that people along the route would take pity on the applicant, who had left Darfur involuntarily and lost his father and then his uncle en route. Everyone accepted that he looked young and he would have cut a pitiful figure.

67. The applicant’s solicitors had not only made their own enquires with the Spanish authorities; they had asked the first respondent for assistance in that regard. The applicant did not know whether he had claimed asylum in Spain. It was wrong to suggest that the burden was on him.

68. The applicant’s account of having been dropped off at a petrol station and wandering around in London until he found King’s Cross was entirely plausible and it was not clear why the respondent contended otherwise. If he had walked for two hours, as he said, he could have been deposited anywhere within a significant radius of Camden.

69. The documents were of assistance to the applicant and the assessors had misunderstood those documents. There was nothing to suggest that either document had anything to do with the UNHCR and the suggestion to the contrary had led to a wild goose chase. Nothing said during the course of the respondent’s enquiries had justified Mr Ambat’s saying to the applicant that his documents “smell” or that they had been “doubted by various officials”. Considering what was said by Mr Verney and Dr Bekalo, the CRC and the IDP card were deserving of weight.

70. Ms Meredith submitted that the assessor’s analysis of events in Darfur in 2004 was seriously in error. They had decided that the applicant was lying and had sought evidence to establish the same. Mr Ambat’s methods had also been criticised by UTJ Peter Lane (as he then was) in R (A) v London Borough of Croydon [2015] UKUT 15 (IAC), at [30]. The first respondent’s assessors also fell into error in asking the applicant questions about the second respondent’s assessment, when both of those assessments had been withdrawn.

71. It was agreed between the parties as a result of the case law that the observations of professionals who had seen the applicant over a considerable period of time were capable of carrying weight. In this case, it was appropriate to attach considerable weight to the observations made by the three live witnesses, which chimed with the majority of opinions expressed about the applicant’s likely age.

72. The assessment was seriously flawed throughout. There were mistakes of fact, errors of approach, irrelevant matters taken into account and relevant matters left out of account. There had been a lack of sufficient enquiry and due diligence. The assessment could not rationally attract any weight. More worryingly, the tone of a number of the questions was improper. The comments about the documents smelling, the suggestion to the applicant by Mr Ambat that he was “lucky that Brexit happened” were all examples of a closed mind.

73. Ms Meredith ended with six points. There were significant flaws and public law errors in the assessment. The same was said about the joint witness statement made by the assessors. The applicant had a range of supportive professional opinion in his favour. There were two documents which also supported his claimed date of birth. The applicant’s account was broadly consistent and was open and honest. The medical evidence was relevant to any difficulties with the evidence, and also added credence to his account. The tribunal was not bound to accept either party’s suggestion as to age and could reach its own conclusion on the evidence before it, but there was no proper basis to conclude that the applicant was born in 2004.

74. I reserved judgment at the end of the submissions.

The Legal Framework

75. It was not suggested by counsel on either side that the processes brought about by Part 4 of the 2022 Act should have any impact on the assessment which is carried out by the tribunal in a case of this nature. The law in relation to such fact-finding hearings in the Upper Tribunal remains as it was before the Act came into force.

76. Part III of the Children Act 1989 (“the 1989 Act”) imposes a range of duties on local authorities in respect of children within their area who are in need. Section 17 of that Act, for example, obliges local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of such children and to provide a range and level of services appropriate to their needs. Section 20(1) of the Act requires that every local authority ‘shall provide accommodation for any child in need within their area’. And, by section 23C of the Act, a local authority may continue to be obliged to perform certain functions in respect of a ‘former relevant child’ (or a person who should be treated as such) even after that individual has attained the age of eighteen.

77. By section 105(1) of the 1989 Act, ‘child’ means a person under the age of eighteen. In R (A) v London Borough of Croydon [2009] UKSC 8; [2009] 1 WLR 2557, the Supreme Court held that whether a person is a child is a question of precedent or jurisdictional fact to be determined by the courts: per Lady Hale at [32], with whom Lords Scott, Walker and Neuberger agreed, and Lord Hope at [51].

78. There is a good deal of learning on the way in which that task is to be performed by the Administrative Court and, more recently, by the Upper Tribunal. A number of authorities of the Upper Tribunal, the Administrative Court and the Court of Appeal appear in the bundle of authorities. More are cited in the comprehensive skeleton arguments prepared by counsel, for which I am grateful.

79. I shall not attempt a review of all the relevant case law. For the moment, I propose to mention only one authority, which is the decision of the Court of Appeal in R (CJ) v Cardiff City Council [2011] EWCA Civ 1590; [2012] PTSR 1235. In his judgment, Pitchford LJ (with whom Laws LJ and Lloyd Jones J (as he then was) agreed) held that the nature of the court’s enquiry under the Children Act is inquisitorial and that it was inappropriate to speak in terms of a burden of establishing a precedent or jurisdictional fact: [21]. The court is required, Pitchford LJ continued, to apply the balance of probability without resorting to the concept of discharge of a burden of proof, and a ‘sympathetic assessment of the evidence’ is appropriate.

Analysis

80. I intend to follow the structure which was helpfully adopted by counsel in their detailed oral submissions. I will therefore focus on the matters which were said by Ms Williams to represent difficulties with the applicant’s narrative before turning to the other evidence in the case which is said to bear on his age.

81. Before embarking on that task, I consider it appropriate to make three preliminary observations.

82. The first observation echoes submissions which were made on both sides, and concerns the applicant’s vulnerability. It might be said that the applicant is vulnerable because he is an asylum seeker who has been exposed to trauma. As I have already recorded, however, his claim to vulnerability is not merely founded in those features. There is before me a detailed psychological report from Alice Rogers. She was eminently well qualified to opine on the applicant’s mental health and no contrary submission was made by Ms Williams. Ms Rogers concluded that the applicant was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder with dissociation at a moderate level as a result of his “multiple experiences of trauma during his developmental period”.

83. When Ms Rogers wrote her report at the end of July this year, she also recorded that the applicant was suffering from depression at a moderate-severe level. She recorded that there had been such a level of concern about his suicidal ideation that a Home Treatment Team had undertaken a “short term crisis intervention for individuals at serious risk of harming themselves”. She stated at [3.2] of her report that:

The PTSD will have been present at the time of age assessment interview and needs to be taken into account when analysing the responses of ALK during interview. It is likely that he was also depressed at the time of the later age assessment; given that he reports better mood when placed with foster carers it is not clear he was depressed at this point, but it is possible that he was depressed even prior to arrival in the UK given that he was reporting PTSD symptoms at this point.

84. At [7.15.1] of her report, Ms Rogers helpfully provided her opinion on the reasonable adjustments which should be made whilst the applicant was giving oral evidence. Every effort was made to ensure that the first day of the hearing proceeded in accordance with what she said in that paragraph, and Ms Williams was particularly adept at ensuring that her cross-examination did not become confrontational despite her perception that the applicant was obfuscating at times.

85. As counsel both observed, however, the significance of the applicant’s mental health must also extend to my evaluation of his evidence, and that includes the oral evidence he gave before me as well as anything that he said to the age assessors or to other professionals with whom he has come into contact over the last twenty nine months. Ms Meredith quite properly reminded me of the Joint Presidential Guidance Note No 2 of 2010 and of what was said about that guidance by the then Senior President of Tribunals, Ryder LJ, in AM v SSHD (Lord Chancellor intervening) [2017] EWCA Civ 1123; [2018] 4 WLR 78. At [33]-[34], Ryder LJ emphasised the importance of a tribunal considering the impact an identified vulnerability had is assessing the evidence before it, in accordance with [15] of the guidance. I have borne that guidance carefully in mind throughout the assessment which follows.

86. The second preliminary observation concerns another line of authority to which Ms Meredith made reference in connection with the first respondent’s reliance on things supposedly said by the applicant when he first came to the attention of the BTP, or at later stages when no official interpreter was present. Ms Meredith reminded me of what was said by Judge Perkins about reliance on screening interviews at [19] of YL (Rely on SEF) China [2004] UKIAT 00145. Given the significance of the passage, I set it out in full:
When a person seeks asylum in the United Kingdom he is usually made the subject of a 'screening interview' … The purpose of that is to establish the general nature of the claimant's case so that the Home Office official can decide how best to process it. It is concerned with the country of origin, means of travel, circumstances of arrival in the United Kingdom, preferred language and other matters that might help the Secretary of State understand the case. Asylum seekers are still expected to tell the truth and answers given in screening interviews can be compared fairly with answers given later. However, it has to be remembered that a screening interview is not done to establish in detail the reasons a person gives to support her claim for asylum. It would not normally be appropriate for the Secretary of State to ask supplementary questions or to entertain elaborate answers and an inaccurate summary by an interviewing officer at that stage would be excusable. Further the screening interview may well be conducted when the asylum seeker is tired after a long journey. These things have to be considered when any inconsistencies between the screening interview and the later case are evaluated.
87. The second case is JA (Afghanistan) v SSHD [2014] EWCA Civ 450; [2014] 1 WLR 4291, in which Moore-Bick LJ (with whom Gloster and Vos LJJ agreed) also emphasised that a degree of caution was required in considering an unrecorded screening interview. Moore-Bick LJ stated that it was necessary to bear in mind the age and background of the applicant, his limited command of English and the circumstances under which the interviews (screening and substantive) took place.

88. Ms Meredith also made reference in this connection to R (Citizens UK) v SSHD [2018] EWCA Civ 1812; [2018] 4 WLR 123, but I have not derived any additional assistance from that case, since the salient parts of the judgments given by Singh and Hickinbottom LJJ focus not on the gathering of evidence but on the adequacy of the reasons given thereafter: [185], for example.

89. I consider what was said in YL and JA to be significant for three reasons in this case. Firstly, just as the primary function of an asylum screening interview is not the gathering of evidence about the substantive claim, it was not the primary function of those outside the age assessment process to consider and record the applicant’s date of birth. Secondly, insofar as different dates of birth were recorded in such encounters, it is necessary to recall the circumstances of those encounters and, in particular, the presence or absence of adequate interpretation. Thirdly, the absence of a recording or a verbatim record of an encounter is often relevant to the weight which can properly be attached to a record of it.

90. Thirdly, I consider it appropriate to record at the outset what I consider to be a striking feature of this case. It was accepted on all sides, as it was in the first respondent’s assessment, that the applicant appears to be young. I have heard a good number of disputed age assessments such as this. I have also heard many appeals brought by unaccompanied asylum seeking children. I cannot recall a case in which I was quite so surprised by the appearance of an applicant or appellant. I recall, obviously, that it has been emphasised time and again in the authorities that physical appearance and demeanour are unreliable indicators of a person’s likely age but it is appropriate to observe that my first (and continuing) impression of the applicant was that he was unlikely to be a fully developed twenty one year old man, as is suggested by the first respondent.

Identity Documents

91. Ms Williams submitted that there were a number of aspects of the applicant’s evidence about the CRC and IDP cards which were of concern. The first point was that there was a discrepancy in the evidence about the way in which the applicant had received these documents. Whilst he had mostly said, as he did in his witness statement and his oral evidence, that he received the documents via WhatsApp from Abdul Latif, he had said something different to a social worker from Camden social services on 20 July 2023. The supposedly different version of events is recorded in a contact record from that social worker (Kerrie Rea) which was recorded at 1239 on that date.

92. The record states that there was a Sudanese Arabic interpreter assisting via the telephone. Ms Rea records in the first paragraph that she had explained to the applicant that he was to be moved to Walsall the following day and that she would assist him with his relocation. The second of the two paragraphs is as follows:

[ALK] then said “I have found my national ID number for Sudan on an old email. I know I said my year of birth is 2007 but this says my year of birth is 2008 but if this is going to cause a problem I will leave it”. I asked him to send me what he has asap and gave him my email address. He agreed to send it. I advised that if this makes any difference to arrangements for tomorrow I will let him know, otherwise I will see him tomorrow.

93. There is unfortunately no evidence before me to show how the CRC, which appears to be the document to which the applicant referred, was then sent to Ms Rea. We cannot know for certain whether he forwarded an email to her or whether he sent the CRC via WhatsApp, using the same medium which had been used to send it to him. There is no statement from Ms Rea on the subject, nor is there any email or WhatsApp evidence on the point. As Ms Meredith submitted, this point was taken for the first time by Ms Williams at the hearing and the applicant has not previously been called upon to address it.

94. I am not prepared to attach any significance to the mention in this contact record to “an old email”. It is, as Mr Meredith put it, an “outlier” in the evidence. I do not know what Arabic words are said to have been used and I do not know what difference there is between the Sudanese Arabic for an email and a WhatsApp message. There is evidently a good deal of scope for error in translating such things, particularly if the interpreter was not au fait with modern means of communication.

95. Ms Williams’ second point was that the applicant had been inconsistent about the dates on which he had provided the two identity documents to the authorities, to use an umbrella term encompassing Camden and Walsall social services. The applicant confirmed in cross-examination that he had received both identity documents from Abdul Latif in July, yet he had submitted the CRC to Camden in July 2023 and the IDP card to Walsall in September 2023.

96. There was some dispute over this aspect of the chronology and the records are not altogether clear. On balance, however, I think Ms Williams is correct that there is enough evidence to show that the blue CRC was provided to Camden on 20 July and the yellow IDP card was submitted to Walsall on 19 September 2023. That is what was recorded on the first page of the first age assessment which was undertaken by the second respondent in October and November 2023 and I consider it unlikely that the record is wrong.

97. Ms Williams submitted that if the applicant had indeed received both documents in July, there was no good reason why he had failed to provide both of them to Camden at that time. In that respect, I agree with Ms Meredith’s submissions. The CRC which the applicant did submit in July is, according to Mr Verney, an official document which is issued to all Sudanese citizens and contains their unique National ID number. The applicant might well have thought at the time that this was all that he required in order to establish his date of birth.

98. In reality, we cannot know the reason that the applicant decided to submit only that document. What we do know, however, is that his life changed dramatically at the end of July 2023, when attempts were made to resettle him in the Midlands. It is clear that he found that process very unsettling indeed, and that he absconded from his accommodation there on several occasions in order to return to London. It was decided after several such incidents that he should be accommodated in London in order to ensure that he was not exposed to undue risk. There is also reference in the papers to the applicant having been attacked in his accommodation in the Midlands. There is some dispute as to what occurred; the applicant pinned the blame in his evidence on the other man, whereas there is a suggestion in the papers that it was caused by the applicant filming the man’s girlfriend. Whatever the truth as to that, it is clear that the applicant found the experience unsettling and that it was a part of the reason that he was so determined to return to London. I accept that all of this upheaval would likely have played a part in the applicant’s failure to provide the IDP card to social services more promptly.

99. The applicant also maintained in his oral evidence that he was told by Walsall not to submit the IDP card until he had met with his lawyer. Given that the point was raised for the first time in oral evidence, there is no documentary evidence which bears on that answer. This is obviously not addressed in the applicant’s statements, since the point was not taken by the assessors. Ms Williams did not take me to anything which suggested that the applicant’s response was incorrect, nor did Ms Meredith take me to anything which suggested that it was true. It is possible that the applicant was told this by social services. It is equally possible that he did not recall what happened; it was some time ago and he was not asked to turn his mind to it until cross-examination.

100. Ultimately, however, Ms Meredith is correct in her submission that nothing properly turns on this point. It is not suggested, as I understand it, that either document is positively forged and the date on which one or both of the documents were provided to the authorities is essentially immaterial to the weight I give to those documents. Nor is the date on which those documents were provided to the authorities rationally connected to the real question in this case, which is straightforwardly the age of the applicant. I do not accept Ms Williams’ submission that this point is “central to the issue” of the applicant’s age; it is peripheral at most.

Dates of Birth Given to British Transport Police and Other Officials

101. The papers contain a record of the applicant’s first encounter with the BTP at King’s Cross in May 2023, in the form of a referral which was made to Camden Social Services by PC Harry Rogers at 1517 on 26 May 2023. This records the applicant’s date of birth as 26 April 2009 and his gender as female.

102. It is common ground that no interpreter was present at this event. The applicant turned up at the police station asking for assistance and PC Rogers evidently did what he could to communicate with the applicant. The applicant said in his statement that he had pointed at numbers provided by PC Rogers in order to give his date of birth. His oral evidence was different; he said that he used his fingers to communicate his date of birth. When the problem was put to him, he said that he had tried to look at the numbers on the page but his eyes were hurting and he was “partially blind” because of the pepper spray administered by a French police officer, so he had communicated by holding up his fingers.

103. I do not consider the discrepancy between pointing at numbers on a page or holding up his fingers to be of any significance. He and the officer were obviously doing what they could to communicate with each other. It is clear that the applicant has had some difficulty with his eyes and that he has been prescribed eye drops as a result. It is likely that the applicant and PC Rogers used whatever means they could in order to communicate, and that the holding up of fingers was also used to communicate numbers. The omission of that from the applicant’s statement is not a matter of significance.

104. The applicant maintains that he gave his date of birth as 2008, and that the year was misrecorded by PC Rogers. This is where the YL and JA principles which I have summarised above come to bear. It was no part of PC Rogers’ function to investigate the applicant’s age. He was confronted with a young person who had arrived unlawfully and he was tasked with contacting the immigration authorities and social services. He had no interpreter to assist him, and there is no reason that he would have taken particular care in recording the applicant’s date of birth. It is quite clear that he did make a fundamental mistake when he stated that the applicant was female. In making that observation, I do not criticise the officer; he was merely passing a baton of responsibility to the appropriate authorities, and was not taking the care that he would presumably have taken had he been investigating a crime.

105. There is no contemporaneous note from PC Rogers, whether in his notebook or otherwise, to explain how he took the applicant’s details. Nor is there a statement from the officer. In all the circumstances, I decline to attach any weight at all to the fact that the applicant’s year of birth was recorded as 2009 by PC Rogers.

106. Ms Williams also relied on an interview between the applicant and two female social workers from Camden later on 26 May 2023. The document is undated but it makes reference to the applicant having arrived that day. On the first page of the document, we see the names of the two social workers. Under their names, there is an instruction to record the name of the interpreter, which states in bold “NEED SURNAME”. The interpreter’s name is merely given as “Emmanuel” however.

107. The applicant’s evidence is that Emmanuel interpreted over the telephone. He said that the social workers read his date of birth from the police referral, and he had only heard them say 26 April, without a year.

108. This evidence and the referral from PC Rogers are rather different. The social workers were tasked with considering the applicant’s date of birth at this stage, as is clear from the rubric on the front page of this interview. Having said that, I consider it likely that the social workers would have asked the applicant to confirm the date of birth which PC Rogers had written in the referral document. Given that the interpretation was over the telephone, there is evidently a risk that the applicant did not hear his year of birth, and that he was content to confirm what he thought PC Rogers had written down, given that he had correctly understood that he was born on the 26th day of April.

109. The principles in YL and JA are also relevant in evaluating this interview, albeit not for precisely the same reasons. My concern about this interview is that this vulnerable applicant stated that he was exhausted when he was interviewed. I note that the end of the interview confirms that the applicant was “tired and quiet” and that he was “teary and emotional” at other times. Given that the applicant was referred to Camden by PC Rogers after 3pm, it is likely that this interview would have taken place in the evening. Whilst there was a telephone interpreter present, and although the interview was conducted by two social workers who were undertaking enquiries specifically about the applicant’s age, I accept the applicant’s evidence that a mistake was made in recording his year of birth in this interview. Given the circumstances of this interview, I do not consider it appropriate to place weight on the record of his year of birth within it.

110. The next record to which Ms Williams referred in cross-examination was a Placement Plan from Camden Social Services. This document is said to record the occasion on which the applicant changed his year of birth for the first time, from 2009 to 2007. The document records that the applicant had booked an appointment with the Asylum Intake Unit on 21 June 2023. Immediately underneath that, there is the following entry:

*please note [ALK] at the PAM1, held on the 06.06.2023 said that he lied to the police officers on the 26.05.2023 when he first entered the UK that his date of birth is actually 26.04.2007 and not 2009. He stated that the police officer did not understand what he was saying and he just agreed to what the officer listed.

111. Ms Williams relied on this for three purposes. Firstly, to confirm that the applicant knew that his year of birth had previously been recorded as 2009. Secondly, to show that the applicant had confirmed that this was a lie. Thirdly, to show that the applicant had then made a conscious decision to change his year of birth to 2007.

112. I am not prepared to attach any weight to this document. There is a space at the end of the document for the author to provide their name, signature and the date of completion. Those details are absent from the copy in the bundle, and it is therefore unclear who completed the form. The record appears to have been completed on 5 June 2023, which is the date on which the placement meeting occurred. Nothing said by the applicant is recorded verbatim, however, and there is nothing on the face of the record which suggests that an interpreter was present or, if so, in what language and dialect. The document records that the applicant’s “Communication Needs” are “Sudanese Arabic” and subsequently that he “speaks the Sudanese dialect of Arabic” but there is nothing to show that there was an interpreter at this meeting.

113. The suggestion that the applicant stated that he had lied to the police is a serious one, but the allegation is not made by a named person, and it is not clear whether there was an interpreter present. In any event, I struggle to reconcile the first and second sentences in the record above. If the applicant lied, and therefore wilfully misstated his date of birth, it is not clear why he would also have said that the officer had not understood him and he had just agreed to what the officer had said. Either he lied and was understood or he told the truth and was misunderstood; it cannot be both. In my judgment, this is not a document which is deserving of any weight.

114. Ms Williams then went to a document titled “Record of statutory CLA visit (CSSW)”. It shows that the date of the visit was 21 June 2023. The applicant was at that time placed with a foster carer called Thelma. It is clear that the applicant and Thelma were both present at the meeting. Once again, however, the identity of the person who made the record is not shown. Nor is it clear whether an interpreter was present.

115. The passage on which Ms Williams relied is under the sub-heading “Identity” on the third page of the document. It is as follows:

Date of birth – [ALK] confirmed during his initial screening that his DOB was 26.4.09 and age 14. However, Thelma advised that when he was placed in her care, he told the placing social worker that he is 16 and his date of birth is 26.04.07. I asked him to confirm for me what his age and DOB is and he confirmed that he is 16 with DOB 26.04.07. I asked why he told Police and the social workers at Crowndale that he is 14. [ALK] stated that the Police got it wrong and with the language he couldn’t correct them. He says he just wanted to get away from the Police so when he was brought to the social workers he kept with the same information as he didn’t wish to be returned to the Police. [ALK] went on to say to me that if it is a problem he can say he is 14. I stressed to [ALK] that he mustn’t do this and the important thing is that he is honest about what his true age and date of birth are and then he must stick to this information and we can work everything else out. I advised that we can inform the Home Office today of his correct date of birth.

116. The applicant was bemused by this record, and it is wholly unclear from the record how this information was taken from the applicant without an interpreter being present. It is clear from a subsequent section that Thelma was not able to speak Sudanese Arabic and there is no suggestion that the anonymous social worker who completed the record was able to do so. The applicant asked Ms Williams “How did she communicate with me? How did I give her all this information?” Ms Williams quite rightly reminded the applicant that she was the one who was asking questions of him, not vice versa, but his point was a valid one. The applicant also asked her who the meeting was with. That too was a valid point, to which no answer is to be found in the document. I do not accept that the applicant was obfuscating in his responses to these questions; he was asking the very questions which are of concern to me, and which remain unanswered by the documents.

117. Ms Williams returned to the point at a later stage of her cross-examination. The applicant stated on this occasion that there was a telephone interpreter booked but the telephone connection had failed and the social worker had seen fit to use a young Egyptian man who was visiting Thelma as an unofficial interpreter. The applicant gave evidence that this man – who was visiting Thelma after leaving her foster care upon turning eighteen – was simultaneously trying to give the applicant advice whilst also translating. The applicant did not understand what the social worker and Thelma were being told and he maintained that his date of birth was 2008 throughout. The fact that there is no mention of an interpreter in the record adds weight to the applicant’s suggestion that this was a somewhat chaotic meeting, and I am not prepared to attach any weight to this record.

118. I appreciate that social services are overstretched, particularly in London, and that there is every reason for them to continue with important safeguarding duties even where they cannot source a reliable interpreter. Nothing which I have said in the preceding paragraphs should be taken as a criticism of the social workers involved in these contact meetings. The question for me, however, is whether these records are deserving of weight insofar as they suggest that the applicant gave a date of birth of 26 April 2009, only to admit that this was a lie and that it should be changed to 2007. For the reasons that I have given, I do not consider the records to be a reliable evidential base on which to found such a conclusion.

119. The contents of the Home Office documents which were also generated on 21 June 2023 were not put to the applicant by Ms Williams but I have noted that those documents all state that the applicant’s date of birth was 26 April 2007. It appears that Camden had notified the Home Office of that date of birth. They had also notified the Home Office that the date of birth was not disputed, as an entry on the Unaccompanied Child Welfare Form records that “Social worker says age has been accepted”.

120. Given the absence of any dispute at the time, I think it more likely than not that the Home Office merely accepted what they had been told by Camden Social Services about the applicant’s date of birth, and filled out the relevant sections of their own documents to reflect the apparently undisputed information that they had been given.

121. I attach no significance to the first respondent’s submission that the applicant has at various times made reference to being in his mother’s womb for nine months or a year. This was not a point pursued with any vigour by Ms Williams, and rightly so. Even if the applicant “always adds a year when people ask his age”, as he said to Ms Kayim of the Refugee Council, I do not accept that he has ever given a different date of birth to the various officials in these interactions.

122. I will consider one additional record which was said by the assessors to be relevant. Ms Williams also referred to the record in her skeleton argument. It is a record of the applicant attending Walsall Manor Hospital on 7 September 2023 after he was found lying in the road by officers from the West Midlands Police. He is said to have given a date of birth of 12 January 1999 to the officers and to the staff at the hospital. As I have recorded above, that was the date of birth on which the second respondent settled in both of their age assessments.

123. I do not consider that any weight can be attached to the suggestion that the applicant gave a date of birth in 1999 to the officers or to the medical staff at Walsall Manor Hospital. They were not focused on his age but on assisting a young man who presented with “severe anxiety and stress following being brought to Walsall from London” and who reported having thoughts of self-harm. There is nothing in the police records which suggest that the applicant had an interpreter when he was first discovered, and it is unclear how they managed to communicate with him at all. What is particularly notable from the record in the supplementary bundle is that the name recorded for the applicant was very different from the name which he has given consistently at all other times, which supports the suggestion that there were problems with communication with the police. It is also clear from the records of the various interactions which took place with the hospital staff on that day that there were problems with interpretation.

124. I bear in mind, of course, that there is a possibility that all of these records reflect things said by the applicant when he was “off guard”, and simply forgot to give a date of birth which he had fabricated. But I must evaluate the reliability of all of these records based on the circumstances in which they were created. For all of the reasons I have given above, I do not consider that I can properly treat any of these records as providing reliable evidence of the applicant giving a different date of birth to police officers, social workers and medical professionals.

125. In sum, the applicant stated that he has consistently given his year of birth as 2008, and I accept his evidence in that regard because there is no reliable evidence to the contrary.

Education

126. It was Ms Williams’ submission before me that the applicant had given an inconsistent and implausible account of his education in Sudan. The concerns she expressed in her concise and focussed submissions echoed those which were expressed in the NAAB assessment:

Assessing social workers feel that [ALK] is being selective in what he wants to tell us about his education and activities before leaving Sudan, and perhaps had in fact completed school education or was potentially working on his father’s farm before he left Sudan, which would suggest that [ALK] is older than the 15 years he is claiming to be.

He stated in his UASC assessment dated 23.6.23 with Camden Borough social worker, Kerrie Rea that he attended for eight years and left in year 6 when he was 11 or 12 years old. However, on 03.07.23 [ALK] told Dr Sarah Walker in his initial health assessment that he attended school until the age of fourteen.

127. In his witness statement, the applicant gave an account of the “Somewhat formal education he had received in Sudan”. He stated that he had attended pre school before he went to Fato Borno elementary school in 2015, when he was approximately six years old. He stated that he had left the school when he was almost 14. He said that his schooling had been interrupted “between grade 4 and 5” by a civil uprising, and that the school had also been disrupted by the pandemic, which had caused long school closures. He stated that he had personally suffered further disruption when he was kidnapped by the Janjaweed when he was around eleven years old. He said that he returned to school in grade 5. He denied having worked on his father’s farm. He said that he was in grade 6 when he left Sudan, and that he had not finished that school year.

128. Ms Williams suggested to the applicant that this account was contradicted by the records kept by Camden social services in June 2023. The relevant record contains a sub-heading “Education history” under which there appears the following:

Does not recall how old he was but noted he left in year 6, when he was either 11 or 12 years old. [ALK] reported to have attended pre-school as well as elementary primary school but did not attend secondary school as the war commenced by then.

129. When the obvious conflict was put to the applicant, he stated that he wanted to explain. He maintained that he had told the social worker that he had indeed “left” school when he was eleven or twelve years old. He said that the war had “erupted between grades five and six”, and that he had also been kidnapped, but that he then returned to school.

130. There was a good deal of confusion in the applicant’s account but it seemed to me that he has used the word “left” to indicate both temporary disruption to his education and a permanent departure. He had consistently maintained that there was a point in time when his education was significantly disrupted by the pandemic, the security situation in Darfur and his kidnapping, but he returned to education thereafter, only to leave school for good when his father decided that they should leave Sudan. That nuance was not understood by the social worker from Camden who made the notes above. That note is not a verbatim record of what the applicant said, or indeed what he was asked, and I do not consider it to be a safe or proper foundation on which to conclude that the applicant has given starkly different accounts of his education.

131. That said, I accept Ms Williams’ submission that there was a lack of consistency and clarity in the applicant’s oral evidence, particularly as regards the school year in which he experienced disruption for the three reasons I have set out above. He suggested at one point that the disruption had been in Y5/Y6 but he subsequently suggested that it had been in Y4/Y5, as he had in his witness statement.

132. I attach no significance to these differences. On the respondent’s version of events, the applicant was a young teenager at this time. His education had been disrupted by a combination of deeply unsettling factors, including an incident in which he was kidnapped, held and ill-treated by the Janjaweed. He thought it likely that he had lost a whole school year, and the assessors seemed to accept that, recording that the pandemic and other factors had had a serious impact on the education of children in Sudan, as it did across the world. Ms Williams asked the applicant about the maximum age of children at his school. He thought that they generally left at twelve, but added that he had been older than that when he left because of the extent of the disruption. In my judgment, any confusion in the evidence is attributable to the disruption which occurred, and to the applicant’s vulnerability and difficulties with recall, and is not an attempt on the applicant’s part to mislead the tribunal in connection with the chronology.

Journey to the United Kingdom

133. It was suggested in the NAAB assessment that the applicant’s account of his journey to the United Kingdom revealed inconsistencies. A concern was expressed about the amount of time that the applicant was said to have spent in Libya, for example, with the assessors noting that the applicant had suggested that he had spent no more than six months in Libya, whereas other aspects of his account suggested that he would have been there for only around three months in total. Similar concerns were expressed about the amount of time that the applicant was said to have spent in Spain.

134. These points of supposed inconsistency were not put to the applicant in cross-examination, and Ms Williams preferred to press the more straightforward point which was also made by the assessors. This was that it was said to be implausible that the applicant had been able to travel across Africa and Europe without funding or adult assistance, as a young teenager.

135. I accept Ms Meredith’s submissions in response to Ms Williams’ point. The applicant is not said to have had an easy journey to the United Kingdom. His father was killed in front of him before they left Sudan. He was separated from his uncle in Libya. He was then exploited and beaten by a man who said that he would help him. He was beaten by border guards in Algeria and Morocco, resulting in hospitalisation. Once he had left Spain, he was pepper sprayed by the French police when he was trying to leave the camp which is often known as The Jungle.

136. What is said by Ms Williams to be implausible is essentially the charity which the applicant received along the way. He was fed and sheltered by other migrants in North Africa. He was assisted by charities once he had reached Europe, and even the lorry driver who unwitting brought him into the UK gave him some money when he left the rear of the vehicle.

137. As Ms Meredith submits, however, the applicant would have cut a pitiful figure and surely, if anyone was to be assisted by migrants who were themselves living a hand to mouth existence, it was a bereaved boy who had already been exploited along the way. The applicant is small, both in terms of height and weight (he weighs less than 60 kilogrammes), and is certainly not contrary to common sense and my experience of human behaviour (Y v SSHD [2006] EWCA Civ 1223, at [26] refers) to think that the periods of hostility and exploitation he encountered en route might have been interspersed with kindness and charity from others.

The Spanish Authorities

138. The applicant has stated on at least one occasion that he claimed asylum in Spain. The assessors took it against the applicant that their enquiries with the Spanish authorities had not yielded any record of such a claim made by a person with the applicant’s details. On page 54 of the NAAB assessment, the assessors made reference to a “network of allied professionals in various European states who can, and do, assist us to confirm details provided by subjects who have passed through these third countries on route to the UK.”

139. There is no record of any such enquiries being made with the Spanish authorities. I was referred to the typed notes kept by the appropriate adult who was present at the applicant’s interviews. The relevant section of those notes is a question from Mr Ambat in the following terms (reproduced verbatim):

You got lucky cause we had Brexit. It means that Britain is separate from Europe before this, one phone call and the fingerprints will be sent. The border guards, fingerprints would be sent around. One of our managers has links in Spain and found no records of [ALK]. We can’t use that evidence against or for him. UNHCR number we wouldn’t be sitting her, and if they found out you used a different name in Spain they won’t be happy. But they won’t find out so.

140. The applicant stated in response that he had used the same name throughout. If this point was to be pursued, it was necessary for NAAB to disclose the records of the enquires which were made with the Spanish authorities. It was necessary in any event as a result of the duty of candour, but Ms Williams confirmed in answer to my question that there is nothing to show that any such enquiries were made. Without that evidence, I cannot be satisfied that the proper details were provided to the proper authorities so that a proper check could be undertaken. I decline to attach any weight to the point in the circumstances.

141. Ms Williams also submitted, in common with the assessors, that the applicant had failed to provide any evidence from the Spanish authorities to confirm that he had been in that country or had claimed asylum there. There are two difficulties with that submission, as Ms Williams frankly accepted. The first is that it seeks to place a burden upon the applicant which he does not bear. The second, in any event, is that the applicant’s solicitors have made every effort to make their own enquiries with the Spanish authorities. They made a request for disclosure under the General Data Protection Regulations on 27 March 2025, to both the Spanish and the French authorities. As Ms Williams accepted, I must proceed on the basis that the applicant’s solicitors would have disclosed any response as a result of the duty of candour. I note that the applicant’s solicitors also asked the respondent for assistance with the enquiries with the Spanish authorities. It is quite clear that the applicant has pursued his own enquiries but to no avail.

142. Ms Williams also submitted that the applicant had given differing accounts of whether or not he had actually claimed asylum in Spain. He was asked by a social worker in Camden whether he had ever claimed asylum in another country, and he was recorded as having stated that he had claimed asylum in Spain. Ms Williams asked him about that in cross-examination, and about the rest of his answer in which he made reference to waiting for “6 months for the outcome of my claim”. I think Ms Williams was correct to submit that the applicant gave no clear answer to this line of enquiry but I do not take that as intentional obfuscation on his part. When he arrived in Ceuta and then in mainland Spain, he was unwell. He stated before me that he was not sure how long he had spent in Spain, and a degree of confusion in his account is understandable, given his age and the trauma he had suffered before and during his lengthy journey to Europe. The concept of a claim for asylum is familiar to judges and lawyers who operate in this field but it is often a difficult one for applicants themselves. A young man who gave his details to the Spanish authorities and was then assigned a social worker in the capital city might well think that he had claimed asylum even if he had never been interviewed in connection with any such claim. Again, the lack of clarity in his account is not properly capable of generating suspicion.

The Applicant’s Journey to King’s Cross

143. Ms Williams said very little about this point in her submissions. She asked me to doubt that the applicant would have been able to locate King’s Cross station without a map or a mobile telephone, and that it was implausible that he had found his way there after two hours of being deposited at a petrol station elsewhere.

144. As Ms Meredith submitted, there is nothing implausible about the applicant’s account. He has never suggested that he was heading to King’s Cross station. He was wandering around, trying to find a person in a position of authority so that he could claim asylum. We cannot know where the applicant was dropped off. As Ms Meredith submitted, it would have been quite some distance from the station if it took him two hours to walk there. There is nothing implausible about a young asylum seeker wandering around in London until they present themselves to a police officer at a mainline train station in order to claim asylum.

145. I have focussed in the analysis above on the specific points taken by Ms Williams during her carefully structured cross-examination. I have obviously taken account of all that was said in the NAAB assessment as well but it would lengthen this judgment impermissibly to try to consider all of those points seriatim. In sum, I did not consider anything said by Ms Williams or in the assessment to undermine the applicant’s credibility. His account has been broadly consistent and, when proper account is taken of his accepted vulnerability, there is nothing in any part of his account which causes me to doubt the account he has given of his age. I found him to be a young man who endeavoured to answer all questions put to him frankly. What Ms Williams perceived to be obfuscation or a lack of cooperation was, in my judgment, some legitimate frustration on the applicant’s part. I did not find him to be vague or evasive; he was forthright and his answers were detailed and spontaneous.

The Age Assessment

146. Ms Williams submitted that the age assessment was undertaken by two highly experienced social workers; that it was evidently the product of considerable work; and that the conclusions were supported by detailed reasoning. I accept all of those submissions, but I consider that the weight which can properly be attached to the NAAB assessment is significantly reduced by the following points.

147. The first difficulty with the assessment concerns the first limb of the conclusions, and the assessors’ conclusion that the destruction of the applicant’s village, Naro, “is recorded as having taken place in 2004” and that “Noro has not been inhabited since 2004”. Those conclusions were based on research undertaken by the assessors on the internet. As the assessors made clear in their conclusions, this was the factor which carried the greatest weight in their conclusions, because it was said to undermine the applicant’s contention that his family had relocated from Naro to the Fata Borno IDP Camp in 2008, shortly after he was born, as a result of an attack on Naro at that point.

148. The report which was cited by the assessors is hyperlinked at footnote 10 of the NAAB assessment. It is a report from Human Rights Watch, dated 6 May 2004 entitled Darfur Destroyed, Ethnic Cleansing by Government and Militia Forces in Western Sudan. It is a fairly lengthy report on the atrocities which were occurring in Darfur at that time. The excerpts relied upon by the assessors were as follows:

Hundreds of villages have been targeted by the government's campaign of deliberate destruction. On February 7, 2004, Sildi, south-east of Geneina, was attacked, first by air and then by land. Eyewitnesses said thirty villages were attacked, in a matter of days, in the sweep that destroyed, Sildi-- Nouri, Nyirinon, Chakoke, Urbe, Jabun, Bule, Dangajuro, Gundo, Jedida, Arara, Kastere, Galala, Nyariya, Werjek, Sildi, Araza, Noro, Roji, Stuarey, Kondi, Ardeba, Cherkoldi, Ustani, Takata, Byoot Teleta, Kikilo, Hogoney, Ambikili, Mishedera.

…. villages in the path of mobilized government and Janjaweed forces have been alerted by friends, relatives, and tribal kinfolk, who have sent runners to give warning. Women and children have been sent away by donkey to Chad or the nearest town, when time was on their side; by foot, to nearby valleys where trees and rocks might provide cover, when it was not.

149. Mr Verney was specifically invited to comment on these passages and on the conclusions drawn by the assessors. He accepted that the information from HRW in 2004 was a direct reference to Naro village being destroyed, from an authoritative source. For my part, I am not sure that is correct. As I understand it, the first paragraph above shows that Sildi was destroyed and that the remaining villages were attacked. It appears from other sections of the report that the Janjaweed and government forces sometimes razed villages to the ground, whereas others were attacked and not rendered completely uninhabitable. Given the lack of dispute between the parties about the destruction of Naro in 2004, however, I will proceed on the basis that it was indeed destroyed in 2004.

150. Mr Verney nevertheless draws attention to the likelihood that villages were often rebuilt “mostly from mud bricks, wood and straw”, only to be attacked again. Mr Verney highlights the importance of considering the security situation, which he describes as being “in flux”. Consideration of the country guidance decisions from that time serve to confirm the correctness of that observation. Paragraph [136] of HGMO (relocation to Khartoum) Sudan CG [2006] UKAIT 00062 records that a ceasefire was agreed in June 2004 but AA (non-Arab Darfuris – relocation) Sudan CG [2009] UKAIT 56 shows that matters had worsened considerably in May 2008 when the rebel forces launched an attack in Khartoum.

151. Mr Verney stated at [41] of his report that there was evidence of an attack on Naro in 2008 which the assessors failed to find. Unfortunately, he gives no source for that statement. Subsequently in his report, however, he details repeated attacks which took place in the applicant’s home area in 2008. A report from the Sudan Tribune, which he quotes at [54] of the report, detailed attacks which were at that time taking place on IDP camps and on “numerous villages”. In the subsequent paragraph, he cites another report: Chaos by Design: Khartoum’s Pattern of Violence in Darfur, 2008, which confirmed in September 2008 that there were reports of attacks on “numerous villages” in North Darfur. Mr Verney then refers to an article from the Reliefweb site titled UN Security Council must do more to protect civilians in Sudan, published on 4 January 2012, which makes express reference to attacks on four named villages, one of which was Naro. Another website also refers to attacks in Naro in 2015.

152. The assessors were provided with Mr Verney’s report and have made a joint statement in which they comment upon it. At [10]-[19] of that statement, they comment on Mr Verney’s opinion that Naro could have been repopulated after the attack in 2004. In one important respect, I accept that those parts of the statement tend to suggest that Mr Verney is mistaken. The attack described in the 2012 report occurred in the South Kordofan area, some way away from the applicant’s home area, and the village of Naro which is named in that report is not his home village but another with the same name. Despite that flaw in his reasoning, however, I consider that his conclusion stands. Mr Verney is a recognised expert on the region. His evidence has been valuable to the Upper Tribunal and its predecessors on numerous occasions, as was recognised at [123] of IM & AI (Risks – membership of Beja Tribe, Beja Congress and JEM) Sudan CG [2016] UKUT 188 (IAC). He is evidently aware, as a seasoned expert on the region, of villages such as Naro being attacked, rebuilt and attacked again, and I attach weight to his conclusion that the applicant’s account of his family being displaced in 2008 is a plausible one. I do not regard that as “pure speculation”, as Ms Williams submitted at [49] of her skeleton; it is opinion evidence from an expert who is eminently well qualified to offer an opinion.

153. It is more likely than not, as Mr Verney suggests, that Naro continued to exist as a village after 2004. Contrary to the view taken by the assessors, therefore, it is not wholly implausible that the village was rebuilt after the attack in 2004, only to be targeted again in 2008, shortly after the applicant was born. I do not consider this central plank of their assessment to bear the weight given by the assessors.

154. Secondly, the assessors were clearly influenced by the fact that the applicant’s wisdom teeth have erupted. There is, however, no indication that all of the applicant’s teeth have reached Demirjian stage H, and dental maturity is merely a marker of general maturation and hence of a chronological age likely to be in the later half of the teens: R (ZM & SK) v London Borough of Croydon (Dental age assessment) [2016] UKUT 559 (IAC). Ms Williams readily accepted that no significant weight could properly be attached to the eruption of the applicant’s third molars.

155. Thirdly, it is clear that the assessors misunderstood the applicant’s identity documents and improperly attached weight to what was said about those documents by the Home Office’s National Document Forgery Unit (“NDFU”) and the UNHCR. At the conclusion of the age assessment process, it was put to the applicant that the documents “have been confirmed as fake”. As Ms Meredith submitted, however, nothing said by NDFU or the UNHCR suggests that to be the case.

156. I cannot understand why the IDP card was thought to be from the UNHCR. Whilst the applicant said in his asylum statement that he thought that one document was from the UNHCR, the yellow document in the papers makes no reference to that agency, nor does it give any indication of their involvement. It states on its reverse that:

This card was issued by the High Authority for Refugees and Displaced Persons in accordance with the Geneva Convention of 1951 and the Organisation of African Unity agreement of 1969. All civil and military authorities are requested to offer the bearer of this card necessary assistance and protection wherever they are.

157. Ms Meredith describes the assessors’ conclusion that this was a UNHCR card as an “obvious error” at [51] of her skeleton argument. I agree with that categorisation. Enquiries were made with the UNHCR. Ms Meredith describes that in her skeleton argument as a “false errand”. I agree with that categorisation also.

158. The card was sent to the UNHCR by Ms Suri on 27 September 2023. Their response to her enquiry appears in the supplementary bundle. I need not set it out in full. It refers to a call made by Ms Suri to the UNHCR on 27 September but also to a document having been “shared” with the UNHCR. It states that Ms Suri had said that the applicant “has a photograph of his UNHCR card from Sudan which states that he is age 15.” The agency responded that “UNHCR in Sudan does not register refugees and does not issue them with documentation”. It was this, and the applicant’s subsequent inability to provide a UNHCR Unique Reference Number which led the first respondent’s assessors to conclude that the card was a “fake”. But that conclusion was irrational because the document did not purport to be issued by the UNHCR and nothing said by that agency could support such a conclusion.

159. The CRC was sent to the NDFU by Ms Suri in August 2023. The response from NDFU’s Mr Martin must unfortunately be set out in full:

I’m unclear on what the putative value of this document may be. The submitted example bears little resemblance to what would be expected and is as you say a monochrome copy of possibly a copy.

The authentic document is quite secure. It should be pale blue in colour and printed by means of offset lithography. The black overprint (headings etc) should also be offset printed. What are known as screen dots should be visible and make up a reasonably detailed background print with areas of numismatic or relief embossed printing which gives the impression of 3D by varying the line thickness/weight/orientation of the lines. The holders image should be printed by means of laser toner process.

Given the method of document printing reasonable detail is present eg the circular logo at the top center has varying colours and is quite detailed.

160. As Ms Meredith observed, there is no formal document forgery report, and this is “as good as it gets”. It was apparently that response which resulted in Mr Ambat suggesting to the applicant that NDFU (and UNHCR) were “suggesting strongly they are forgeries”. I very much doubt, with respect to Mr Ambat, that the email from NDFU even suggests that the CRC is a forgery. It certainly does not strongly suggest that. He also suggested to the applicant that the documents ‘smell’ and that their “own fraud unit won’t touch them”. These were strong statements indeed, and they found no proper foundation in the email from NDFU. The high point of the email from Mr Martin, from the first respondent’s perspective, is the observation that the card “bears little resemblance to what would be expected” but he provides no indication of the basis for that opinion, and he gives no indication of whether any of the security features he described were present or absent on the document.

161. It was said in the assessment that the NDFU and the UNHCR provided “cogent reasons for doubting the veracity of these documents.” That is simply incorrect, for the reasons I have given. The assessors treated these documents as inherently suspicious because of what they had been told by the UNHCR and the NDFU but nothing in those communications provided any proper basis for those suspicions. It is of concern to me that Mr Ambat accepted in R (A) v London Borough of Croydon [2015] UKUT 168 (IAC) that he “may have gone too far with the issues relating to documentation emanating from” the young person in that case. That same criticism might properly made ten years later.

162. Fourthly, as I have already mentioned, the first respondent attached significance to the enquires she had supposedly made with the Spanish authorities but there is nothing before me to substantiate that such enquiries were made; or that they were properly made; or that the response from the Spanish authorities properly supported the suspicions that the applicant had not given the same name and date of birth to the Spanish authorities.

163. Fifthly, and related to the two points immediately above, I accept Ms Meredith’s submission that the weight which can properly be attached to the age assessment is yet further reduced by the way in which it was conducted. On any view, the applicant was a young person who had been through a range of traumatic experiences and proper allowance was to be made for that vulnerability during the process. Whilst the assessors acknowledged that principle, there is scant indication that it was observed and there are aspects of the questioning which suggest that the interviews were not conducted in the way that they should have been. Mr Ambat’s observations about the applicant being “lucky” that Brexit had happened and his comments that the applicant’s documents smelt and that the forgery team would not go near them were not appropriate when dealing with such an interviewee. Ms Williams was unable to suggest otherwise.

164. For all of these reasons, I am unable to place weight on the assessment.

Evidence in Support of the Applicant’s Claimed Age

165. Ms Meredith submitted orally and in her skeleton argument that the IDP card and the CRC provided “cogent support” for the applicant’s account of his age. I consider that submission to be a bridge too far, even when I consider what was said by Mr Verney and Dr Bekalo about those documents.

166. The original documents have never been produced. The copies which we have are quite poor. The CRC copy is not complete. The obvious way to check the authenticity of that document would be to scan the QR code which appears on the bottom right hand side of the document but a significant portion of the QR code is missing from the copy because the whole page has not been captured.

167. Mr Verney noted that the layout and content of the CRC was consistent with other such documents he had seen. He suggested that it was “highly unlikely” that the document was falsified or fraudulently obtained and he opined at [25] that the document was likely to be genuine but the basis for that opinion is essentially that the documents looks as he would expect it to look. His conclusion about the IDP card was essentially the same. Having noted (as I have above) that it did not purport to be a UNHCR card, he said that it was given to IDPs to obtain food and other aid, and that there was “no reason I can see to doubt that it is genuine”.

168. Dr Bekalo’s report does not take matters much further. He realistically observed that the documents were copies and that there was no means of cross checking their contents with colleagues in Sudan but he opined that there were “typical and authentic” which meant, as with Mr Verney, that they looked as he would have expected them to look. In other words, there was nothing on the face of the documents which suggested that they were unreliable.

169. On proper analysis, therefore, neither expert’s report provides any real support for the authenticity of the CRC and the IDP card. On the other hand, neither the NDFU report not the email from the UNHCR provide any real reason to consider these documents to be unreliable, for the reasons I have already set out. The reliability of the documents is therefore to be considered in the round, taking all of the other evidence into account, in accordance with long established principles: Tanveer Ahmed v SSHD * [2002] UKIAT 439; [2002] Imm AR 318.

Professional Observations

170. I derived more assistance from the observations of professional people with whom the applicant has come into contact during his time in the UK. Ms Williams quite properly accepted in her submissions that it was proper to draw on such opinions in light of the authorities cited by Ms Meredith: the ADCS Guidance, R (AM) v Solihull MBC [2012] UKUT 118 (IAC) and R (AE) v LB Croydon [2012] EWCA Civ 547. She noted a number of limitations with the evidence, and highlighted that there was a range of opinion.

171. I recognise that there is a range of opinion about the applicant’s age in the papers. For example, the Social Workers in Walsall obviously considered him to be over 18, although their assessments were withdrawn in the face of pre-action letters. Matthew Payne, the applicant’s allocated social worker also considered him to be over the age of eighteen.

172. As Ms Meredith submitted, however, the preponderance of opinion is that the applicant’s date of birth is as claimed. Social workers in Camden were prepared to accept that the applicant was a child, even when it was thought that he was suggesting that his date of birth was 26 April 2009. Gaby Couchman, Islington’s Project Manager and Special Adviser for UASCs was sufficiently troubled by the prospect that the applicant might be deemed by Walsall to be an adult that she wrote to Ms Suri and Mr Caville on 19 December 2023, urging them to reconsider their assessment. Having seen Walsall’s assessment, having met the applicant and having considerable experience in the area of age assessments, that Camden “would have applied the benefit of the doubt … and accepted him as a child”.

173. The applicant’s foster carer’s in Walsall opined that he looked like he was between fifteen and sixteen years old. Of greater significance, however, is the evidence which was given orally by Ms Khalid, Ms Feseha and Ms Robson on the second day of the hearing.

174. Ms Khalid works for the Refugee Council as an Age Dispute Casework Adviser. She made a statement dated 21 August 2025. She has been in her current role since February 2025. She previously worked with a charity called Young Roots and in international humanitarian organisations. She has worked with young people from different backgrounds since 2018. She is originally from Sudan. As her title suggests, her role at the Refugee Council involves supporting young people who are the subject of an age dispute. The applicant has been known to the service since June 2023, and to Ms Khalid since April 2025. She first met him in person at the end of May 2025. She thought he looked young and found him to be shy. She spent a full day with him, and was able to speak to him in Arabic. She remarked on his hairstyle and his clothing and she stated that she had to help him with bus tickets after they had met. In common with her colleague who had previously worked with the applicant, Ms Kayim, she had no reason to doubt that he was the age claimed.

175. In her oral evidence, Ms Khalid recalled what had been said by Ms Kayim about how vulnerable the applicant was. She had received a day’s training on age assessments and she had significant experience of working with young people. She attached weight to Ms Kayim’s experience and her opinion of the applicant. She thought he was younger than eighteen. She remarked that she was able to speak to him in his first language and that the language he used about “the legal dispute” was the sort of language she would expect a child to use.

176. Ms Williams highlighted in cross examination and submissions that Ms Khalid had met the applicant infrequently and only comparatively recently. There had been other young people present when they had met in person. She noted that Ms Khalid had received limited formal training on age assessment. Ms Williams criticised Ms Khalid’s reliance on the applicant’s clothing and other such matters, to which she responded that she had also drawn on the applicant’s demeanour and his interactions with other young people, who were younger than seventeen. She explained that the words the applicant used were “immature”, although she gave no examples. She explained that the bus tickets she had given to the applicant were tickets which had to be ripped off and given to the driver and that he was unfamiliar with them. Responding to Ms Williams’ suggestion that she could be wrong in her conclusion about the applicant’s age, she said that there was no way to tell but that she still strongly believed him to be between seventeen and eighteen.

177. Ms Feseha works for a registered charity called the Da’aro Youth Project as a Casework Supervisor. She has made statements dated 31 January 2024 and 28 May 2025. She has been a supervisor since May 2025. She was previously a caseworker at the charity from March 2023. Before that, she had volunteered at the charity for two years. She provides support to young people on a wide range of issues including immigration issues and homelessness. She first met the applicant in November 2023 when he approached the charity for support with the age assessment. Their first meeting lasted an hour, during which the applicant was very upset with Walsall. She was able to lift his mood by speaking to him about football. She recalled his excitement about a trip to London in January 2024, when they went to get coats from a charity called Thread Ahead. She remarked in her statement on his naivety and his interaction with other young people of his claimed age. She noted that he sometimes referred to adults as ‘big people’. She made observations about the toll which the age assessment had had on the applicant.

178. In her oral evidence, Ms Feseha spoke about the applicant’s attendance at the youth clubs offered by the project. There were not many attendees in early 2023 and she was able to interact with him a good deal. She believed that he was a child because she had seen him with other people of his claimed age and he had a certain naivety. She remarked that he was trusting of adults. She also noted, as she had in her statement, that he was excited about things like getting a new coat and going to London, and she thought that was more consistent with his claimed age than that suggested by the NAAB.

179. Ms Feseha accepted in cross-examination that she has no formal age assessment experience or training, although she has a course booked in November. Ms Williams queried whether the there was any validity to Ms Feseha’s observation that football lifted the applicant out of a bad mood; that might be said about many adults, she suggested. Ms Feseha accepted that to be the case, but said that she had noticed that the applicant had a childlike difficulty with managing his emotions. She explained that the older people with whom she worked, who were up to the age of 25, were often better able to regulate their own emotions by consoling with their friends. The applicant, she said, was more reliant on adults. Ms Feseha confirmed that she did not speak any Arabic but she confirmed that her manager did so, and that her reference to the applicant describing adults as ‘big people’ was a direct translation. Ms Feseha accepted that she might be wrong, but she was of the view that the applicant is seventeen.

180. Ms Robson is a Director at the Da’aro Youth Project. She explains that it provides support to young refugees and asylum seekers from the Horn of Africa. She has worked at the organisation since July 2021. She has been working with young people, migrants and asylum seekers for a decade. She currently oversees all of the caseworking support provided by the club, having helped to set up that department. It offers support with various aspects of their lives, including housing, immigration and other issues. Two days per week, she runs events at which the young people can meet other youngsters from the same background.

181. Ms Robson first met the applicant in November 2023, when he came to the club and asked for casework support. By the time she signed her statement in September 2024, she had formed the view that the applicant was fifteen. This was because of the way he looked physically and the way that he carried himself. She had also had a chance to observe the way in which he interacted with other young people.

182. In her oral evidence, Ms Robson stated that she had started volunteering at the project in 2018, and had undertaken an informal caseworking role there since 2020, after which she set up the caseworking team. She is a professional linguist by training, and works at the International Criminal Court at the Hague. She provided further information about the club she runs at the project on Tuesdays and Thursdays. About sixty young people attend on a Tuesday and maybe forty five on a Thursday. It is a walk-in service. They are fortunate to have a football coach from Fulham Football Club (“FFC”). She had observed the applicant playing football and table tennis with other young people of his claimed age.

183. Cross-examined by Ms Williams, Ms Robson accepted that she had made an error in her statement – the applicant did not claim to be fifteen years old when she signed her statement. She had not known the exact date of birth he claimed. Ms Williams suggested to Ms Robson that the applicant had relocated to the Midlands shortly after their first encounter. She accepted that to be the case, but noted that he had continued to visit the club when he was in London. She thought he came every other month as he had friends at the club. There had been six or seven visits, she thought.

184. Ms Robson accepted that her opinion was based partly on the applicant’s appearance. She noted that her opinion was also based on what she had observed of the applicant’s interactions with other young people and the way in which he interacted with the staff. The friendships he had formed and maintained were with other teenagers. Ms Williams suggested to Ms Robson that the applicant might be older than his claimed age. She accepted that possibility but doubted it to be so, given the ages of the peer group he had formed.

185. I asked Ms Robson a number of questions for clarification. She stated that she spoke Tigrinya, Amharic and Italian. Two of her team at the project were Arabic speakers. The majority of their clients were Tigrinya or Amharic speaking. The applicant had picked up some English. Ms Robson estimated that their clients were 40% Eritrean, 30% Ethiopian and the remainder were from Sudan. There were twenty to twenty five children in the applicant’s football group. He was particularly close to five or six of those boys, each of whom is sixteen or seventeen. She noted that the football coach from FFC divided the young people into age groups so that the games were fairer and safer.

186. Whilst Ms Williams accepted that the observations of professional people might be of assistance to a fact-finding tribunal, she submitted that I could not attach any real weight to the evidence of these three witnesses for the reasons I have summarised above. I disagree. Whilst none of the three witnesses has any real age assessment training, the value of their evidence lies in the way in which they have seen the applicant interacting with other young people who are of the same age.

187. I was particularly impressed with Ms Robson, who has observed the applicant on a number of occasions, playing football and table tennis and forming friendships which have lasted despite his relocation to the Midlands under the National Transfer Scheme. She accepted that one aspect of her reasoning process was based on the applicant’s physical appearance, which is obviously notoriously unreliable, but she emphasised that her view was largely premised on the way in which the applicant interacted with other teenagers. I attach weight to that. The applicant has interacted with a variety of social workers, medical professionals and police officers on the occasions I have touched upon above, but it is the evidence of these three witnesses which provides an insight into the way in which he interacts with other young people.

188. The applicant might of course have hoodwinked the three witnesses. He went to them at a time when his age was disputed and I do not lose sight of the fact that the assessors considered him to be capable of a degree of manipulation. But the opinion of the three witnesses was based on the way in which the applicant repeatedly gravitated to people of his claimed age (and vice versa) in a relaxed social setting. The fact that other young people of that age were prepared to form lasting friendships with the applicant points quite squarely, in my judgment, away from him being the age suggested by the assessors.

189. In sum, I am prepared to attach weight to the applicant’s evidence and that of the witnesses called in support of his case, whereas I am prepared to attach less weight to the opinion of the assessors. Having considered the applicant’s copied documents in the round, I find them to be reliable and that they also offer support to his claimed date of birth. On the balance of probabilities, I conclude that the applicant is the age he claims, and that he was born on 26 April 2008.

190. I invite counsel to agree on the form of the order.

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