In R (on the application of EXR) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] EWHC 1568 (Admin), the High Court set out how courts should review a Home Office decision to treat a young person as an adult for the purpose of removal to France under the UK-France agreement. The correct standard, according to this decision, is one of reasonableness, rather than correctness. In other words, courts cannot decide for themselves how old someone is in the context of proposed removals to France – they can only look at whether the decision made by the Home Office was reasonable or not.
Background
The claimant in this case was a young person from Eritrea, who arrived in the UK by boat in September 2025 and claimed asylum. He initially gave a date of birth that would make him 25 years old. He later told the Home Office he was 17, explaining that he had given an older date of birth on instructions from the smugglers. The Home Office did not accept this and, following an initial age assessment, assessed him as being 25. The claimant was identified as eligible to be removed to France under the agreement and was detained as a result. He was then served with removal directions in December 2025.
He brought judicial review proceedings challenging these removal directions, arguing that he was an unaccompanied child and therefore not eligible to be removed to France under the agreement.
Both parties agreed that unaccompanied children should not be removed to France under the agreement, and that a young person treated as an adult for the purpose of removal is entitled to challenge that decision before a court. What they disagreed on was the correct standard of review and the role of the court in these challenges.
The claimant argued that the court should determine age for itself, applying the correctness standard of review. This, he argued, was consistent with R (A) v London Borough of Croydon [2009] UKSC 8, which established that courts can determine age for themselves when reviewing age assessments carried out by local authorities. It would also be consistent with AA (Sudan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWCA Civ 138, where the judge found that courts can determine age for themselves in the context of challenges to unlawful immigration detention.
The claimant therefore argued that he should not be removed to France until his age was finally determined by a court.
Reasonableness as the correct standard of review
The court disagreed with the claimant. The legal analysis in the decision is quite complex.
The judge found that the Home Office power to determine a young person’s age, for the purpose of removal to France, comes from policy guidance, rather than from primary legislation. The judge noted that the relevant guidance (including the Inadmissibility guidance, Assessing Age and the Selection Instructions under the agreement) clearly gives the Home Office the sole power to determine a young person’s age. This leaves no room, according to the judge, for courts to make their own determination of age. The court’s role is to scrutinise the correct interpretation of policy guidance, rather than to remake the decision. In other words, as the Home Office is exercising power under policy guidance, rather than primary legislation, the role of the court is to establish whether the decision is unreasonable, rather than whether it is factually correct.
Interestingly, the judge at paragraph 53 found that, in challenges against removal to France based on age, there could potentially be three separate grounds, attracting different standards of review. The judge agreed that age can be determined by courts in the context of challenges against unlawful detention and against a local authority assessment (in line with R (A) and AA (Sudan)). Yet, as the Home Office power to treat someone as an adult for the purpose of removal to France comes from policy guidance giving sole power to the Home Office to determine age, a court cannot make its own determination of age in this context.
Having established the correct standard of review, the judge decided to continue the hearing, to establish exactly how the court should assess the Home Office’s decision – including the level of scrutiny to be applied and the approach to fresh evidence.
Conclusion
This decision is a complex read, but it is an important one. The fact that a court cannot determine age for itself in challenges against removal to France of people who may be children is worrying. Reasonableness challenges are difficult and the threshold is a high one.
It may be that the best way forward in these cases is to challenge both unlawful detention and proposed removal to France at the same time. As noted in the decision, courts will be able to determine age in the context of a challenge to unlawful detention. If a court was to find detention to be unlawful on the basis of someone being a child, this would, in turn, be likely to halt any proposed removal to France.
Nevertheless, it will be interesting to read the next determination from the court in this case.Â