Young asylum seekers far more likely to be assessed as adults by immigration officers than by social workers

Young asylum seekers in the UK are more than twice as likely to be assessed as adults by immigration officers than by social workers, according to home office data . Between July 2025 and March 2026, 4,320 initial age decisions made by immigration officials found just 1,363 new arrivals (32%) to be children. During the same period, 3,102 age assessments carried out by local authority social workers recorded 1,198 individuals (68%) as children. The information, which the Home Office is publishing for the first time, comes at a time when some politicians have accused adult asylum seekers of pretending to be children. The Home Office says that initial assessments by immigration officers are typically made ‘at pace’ often with limited or incomplete information. Local authority age assessments are often conducted over a period of six to eight weeks. The Home Office has established a national age assessment board (NAAB) with its own in-house social workers to conduct age assessments of age-disputed young asylum seekers. It is proposing strengthening the weight given to its own in-house assessments. Many children from countries such as Afghanistan, Sudan and Eritrea do not have passports or birth certificates, either because they have never had them, or because they’ve been destroyed, lost or taken. In thousands of cases, UK border officials decide a person’s age based on a visual assessment of their “appearance and demeanour”. …