3 Years On: BASW UK reviews the National Age Assessment Board

The National Age Assessment Board (NAAB) will have its 3-year anniversary on 31st March. The NAAB is a Home Office project brought in as part of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 to support local authorities in determining the age of individuals claiming asylum whose age is disputed. If they are determined to be under 18, they are considered to be unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC). 

The NAAB directly employers’ social workers to undertake age assessments where local authorities refer to the NAAB and also where the Home Office disagrees with the outcome of a local authority assessment – or the decision to accept the claimed age without an assessment. This means that the Home Office can ‘overrule’ local authority decision.

For social workers across the UK, this milestone is an opportunity to reflect on what must still be done to ensure that age assessment practice has social work values at its core. 

Age assessment is not simply a tick box exercise or a technical judgement. Decisions about age affect almost every aspect of a young person’s life because children are afforded certain protections under law. These assessments can be incredibly complex and need to take into consideration that the young people undergoing them will likely have faced harsh conditions such as war, malnutrition and dangerous routes to the UK.

Evaluation of the NAAB

The Home Office commissioned The National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) to undertake a process evaluation to assess whether the NAAB is being implemented as intended and the extent to which it is perceived to be achieving its intended outcomes. Unfortunately, the evaluation has only skimmed our key objections to the NAAB and has not considered issues such as impartiality. There is a fundamental conflict of interest with Home Office undertaking immigration control and its employees undertaking age assessments. Impartiality is only briefly mentioned in the evaluation as a reason for why it was a struggle to get local authority buy-in, but there was no evaluation as to the conflict of interest itself.

The report doesn’t consider any measurements of success of the NAAB such as how many successful appeals there had been of Home Office assessments. It talks of training, but not of whether the training resulted in a better quality of age assessment or experience for the young person being assessed. If we are to consider the legal challenges to NAAB age assessments, there is much to doubt of the calibre of age assessment they are conducting.  

If the NAAB is serious about evaluating its performance, we would urge them to consult more widely on the quality and impact of their service including organisations who work with young refugees and not least the children and young people themselves. 

Legal challenges

At the end of 2025, the Upper Tribunal handed down two judgements on age assessment appeals that were ruled against the Home Office. The tribunal found that applicant ALK was a child born in 2008 and not an adult born in 2004 as the NAAB decided. The Upper Tribunal ruled that the NAAB had gone ‘too far’ in their suspicion that the applicant’s ID was forged and made ‘obvious errors’. The NAAB also relied on the eruption of wisdom teeth as evidence of age, and failed to observe the principles regarding the appropriate treatment of minors during age assessment interviews who have suffered a range of traumatic experiences. 

The tribunal also found that in regard to applicant SS, the NAAB had reached the wrong factual conclusion. He was referred to the NAAB by Croydon, and the NAAB found him to be 19 years old. This resulted in his support from Croydon being terminated. SS initially reported that he was born in 2005 and when he was able to get a copy of and produce his Tazkira (national identity card in Afghanistan) that confirmed he was actually born in 2007 the NAAB said it was produced to corroborate his claimed age and his inconsistency undermined his credibility. Even after the Tazkira was authenticated and observations of SS at college supported his birth year as being 2007, the Home Secretary refused a re-assessment. 

During this case, the Secretary of State made a submission that the Tribunal should in general give NAAB age assessments greater weight (compared with local authority assessments) given NAAB’s independence, skill and specialist training. This was rejected. BASW firmly disagrees with the suggestion that the NAAB is independent or more skilled than local authority social workers.

Report of the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration 

The ICIBI inspection (covering July 2024 to February 2025) examined how the NAAB conducts age assessments for those who claimed to be unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. 

The report found that there are long‑standing issues with training, rushed procedures and record‑keeping; inconsistent application of guidance on when to challenge a claimed age; and a lack of cultural awareness and trauma‑sensitive practice in interviews. The report also found that there is blurring between two functions of the Home Office: enforcement and welfare. This has been a concern for BASW since the NAAB was announced. 

Local authorities and the NAAB

We have been made aware that some local authorities are refusing to work with the NAAB. There have been reports that some assessments conducted by the NAAB were traumatic for the young people. 

In the evaluation conducted by NatCen there had been feedback from local authority staff that the longer duration of NAAB assessments led to increased costs and that there were communication problems with the NAAB which caused frustration. 

We are also mindful that involvement of the NAAB does not entirely transfer authority to the Home Secretary in the event of a legal challenge, as seen in the successful challenge brought forward by ‘ALK’, where Walsall Borough Council were named as a second respondent. Decisions not made by local authorities are still bringing them into disrepute due to the poor standard of assessments conducted by the NAAB. 

BASW’s position

We have opposed the NAAB since it was first created as we believe that social workers instructed by local authorities are best placed to carry out age assessments. Local authorities do not determine immigration or asylum policy, and their assessments will have no bearing on migrant statistics which could be used for political purposes. 

It remains BASW’s position that we encourage social workers not to work for the Home Office. This is not the same as making a referral to the NAAB. If your employer requires you to refer to the NAAB, you should comply. If you share our professional concerns, you can share this statement with your employer.