COB -v- West Northamptonshire Council (anonymity order)

Administrative CourtHigh CourtKing's Bench DivisionAnonymity Order

Case number: AC-2025-BHM-000238

In the High Court of Justice
King’s Bench Division
Administrative Court

In the matter of an application for judicial review

7 October 2025

Before:

HHJ Tindal
(sitting as a Judge of the High Court)

Between:

The King
on the application of
COB

-v-

West Northamptonshire Council

Order

Notification of the Judge’s decision on the application for permission and interim relief After consideration of the documents lodged by the Claimant and Defendant

ORDER by HHJ Tindal (Sitting as a Judge of the High Court)

  1. Pursuant to CPR 39.2(4)) and the Court’s inherent jurisdiction:
    a. No person shall identify the Claimant in connection with these proceedings. The Claimant shall be referred to as COB.
    b. A non-party may not obtain or inspect a copy of any Statement of Case or any other document filed with the Court and to which a non-party may have access pursuant to CPR 5.4A-D or otherwise, unless it has been produced or edited so as to comply with para.1 of this Order and/or any subsequent direction made by the Court.
    c. Anyone affected by the terms of this Order shall have permission to apply to vary or set aside any part of it, on 3 working days’ notice.
  2. The need for a Litigation Friend is dispensed with under CPR 21.2(3).
  3. Application for extensions of time for the Claim and Reply are refused
  4. The Claimant’s application for permission for judicial review is refused.
  5. The Claimant’s application for interim relief is refused.
  6. No order for costs save public funding assessment of the Claimant’s costs.

Reasons

  1. This claim issued on 30th July 2025 challenges the Defendant’s age assessment of the Claimant dated 11th February 2025. It is therefore considerably out of time and there are no good reasons to extend time. Indeed, the claim is not only unarguable, it comes close to being totally without merit, although I refrain from certifying it as such. However, I am surprised that it passed any sort of Legal Aid merits assessment.
  2. The Claimant is a national of Sudan and arrived in the UK and claimed asylum in December 2024. He claimed to be 17, but was assessed by the Home Office to be 30 years old. Having seen the photographs, I can understand why. He has a receding hairline and looks like he could have children aged 17, let alone being 17 himself. He maintained his contended age and was interviewed by the Defendant’s social workers on 11th February 2025 who unsurprisingly found he was an adult.
  3. The legal principles are very familiar. I have been referred to numerous cases, but the key ones are R(C) v Merton LBC [2003] EWHC 1689, R(A) v Croydon LBC [2009] UKSC 8, R(FZ) v Croydon LBC [2011] EWCA Civ 59, R(HAM) v Brent LBC [2022] EWHC 1924 (Admin) and they all were summarised in R(SB) v KCLBC [2023] EWCA Civ 924. There are two different public law challenges to age assessments:

3.1 Firstly, the Court itself can assess age of a putative child as a question of fact under s.20 Children Act 1989 (‘CA’): R(A)). When considering permission for judicial review, the Court should ask whether the evidence raises a factual case which at its highest, could not succeed in a contested factual hearing. If so, permission should be refused. If not, the case should be transferred to the Upper Tribunal for directions/hearing: R(FZ). However, as the Court of Appeal emphasised at [6], the threshold falls to be assessed on all the material before the Court, not simply a claimant’s bare assertion that he is a child.

3.2 Secondly, it remains strictly open to a claimant in judicial review proceedings to challenge an age assessment on conventional public law grounds, as in Merton. But as explained in R(HAM), the commonly-made distinction between ‘Merton-compliant’ and ‘short-form’ age assessments is legally irrelevant: what matters is that there is a reasonable investigation and fair process on the facts; and that if an authority is ‘minded to find’ that the applicant’s narrative account of his age is not credible, they should be given an opportunity to address those concerns before a final assessment is made. There is no ‘one-size fits all’ approach about social workers assessing, or appropriate adults being present. In an ‘obvious case’ a ‘reasonable enquiry’ may be brief, but that less obvious cases require fuller investigation. Moreover, as Swift J emphasised in R(HAM) at [32]:

“[I]f the case is an obvious one what is required by way of reasonable enquiry may be brief. There will be some instances where lawful decisions can be taken on the basis of appearance and demeanour alone.”

However, as stressed in R(SB), it will rarely be appropriate to ‘hive off’ a public law challenge. An arguable public law lapse might support an application for permission, but if it is granted, the whole case should be transferred to the Upper Tribunal.

  1. As usual, the claim adopts both grounds of challenge. Neither of them are arguable. There is no realistic prospect of the Claimant succeeding in establishing he was a child on entry to the UK: it would be hopeless. Nor is there any force in any of the generic public law challenges: as clarified in R(HAM) there is no requirement to give a ‘margin for error’ (although if there was, we can safely say the Claimant would be outside it); nor was any appropriate adult nor ‘minded to find’ process required in circumstances where the assessment was based entirely – and inevitably – on physical appearance and adult demeanour rather than any assessment of his credibility, which was immaterial.
  2. I refuse permission and the application for interim relief. The Claim and the Reply are out of time and there is no good reason to extend time for either. As the Claimant is legally-aided, the usual order applies.

Signed HHJ Tindal