Is there a duty owed by a local authority to those claiming to be asylum seeking children who are detained at an immigration detention (removal) centre?
The statutory basis of a local authority’s duty Local authorities owe duties under sections 17 and 20 of the Children Act 1989 to all children ‘within their area who are in need’ [1], or who ‘require accommodation’ [2] for any of the reasons specified in section 20. The question is whether a duty is owed to a detained asylum seeker claiming to be a child. The local authority’s duty to conduct an age assessment When it comes to the assessment of age, each decision maker (in this case a local authority children’s services department) must make its own decision. It would be unlawful for a local children’s services authority to conclude that a detained asylum seeker was an adult merely because the Home Office had done so. [3] For children’s services departments it is implicit in the legislation and explicit in the statutory guidance [4] that a duty to assess exists if an individual might be a child in need under the Children Act. The duty to assess whether an individual is a child in need
