Proposed changes to National Age Assessment Board a threat to children's rights - BASW

Local authorities could lose ability to make their own decisions over age-disputed asylum seekers under proposals being considered by the Home Office.

BASW has warned if implemented it “will have significant consequences on children’s rights” and the ability of local authorities to uphold them.

The threat comes under proposed enhanced powers to the controversial National Age Assessment Board (NAAB), an agency set up by the Home Office in 2023 to make decisions in disputes over age with people seeking asylum.

Currently, local authorities ultimately decide if a young person qualifies to be supported as a child, even if NAAB has assessed them as an adult.

However, an amendment to the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 circulated with the Kings Speech would see decisions made by NAAB as binding.

The Home Office claims the change is being considered because local authorities “vary considerably in their experience of conducting age assessments”.

This, it claims, “could lead to an individual assessed as an adult by the NAAB being placed in a care system with vulnerable children”.

However, BASW said: “The narrative is entirely focused on ‘stopping adults from accessing children’s services’, with no reference at all to protecting children who are misclassified as adults.

“This messaging reinforces that the driver here is immigration control, not safeguarding.” 

BASW said the proposal would “effectively override Children Act duties”, and stressed court rulings have shown NAAB decisions to be inconsistent and too often failing to consider vulnerability.

The Home Office claims the proposal to make NAAB decisions binding will “protect local authorities from being legally challenged directly and provide a more definitive route to the establishment of a person’s age”.

But BASW disagrees, claiming it sidelines local safeguarding knowledge, would weaken corporate parenting and implies local authorities “don’t know what they’re doing”.

Sam Baron, BASW’s interim chief executive, said: “With every further move that the Home Office makes on age assessments, it becomes clearer that for them, age assessments are for the purposes of immigration enforcement. 

“There is no reason that the NAAB should ever have been created when local authorities are more than capable of carrying out age assessments with support and training. It was planned to be an immigration function from the start, and this latest statement confirms it by further removing autonomy from local authorities. 

“The home secretary continues to lose appeals on age assessments with rulings describing NAAB assessments as poor quality. Local authorities should think twice before entrusting the Home Office with these assessments and should fight back against this move to further minimise the role of local authorities. 

“BASW believes the NAAB should be disbanded and the millions of pounds spent on it should be redistributed to local authorities.”

BASW has previously urged social workers not to join NAAB, believing responsibility for age assessing asylum seekers should remain with local authority social workers.

It maintains outsourcing this function to a centralised agency within the Home Office risks “political priorities intruding on professional objectivity”.

Despite assurances by the Home Office of NAAB’s autonomy, an Immigration and Asylum tribunal last month judged they were “not distinct entities”.

Baron added: “The courts are now in agreement with BASW that the National Age Assessment Board is an immigration function, not a safeguarding one.”