July 2023 – Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children

The mandatory scheme replaced a previously voluntary process and required the Home Secretary to be satisfied that compliance with a transfer direction would not unduly prejudice the discharge by a receiving authority of any of its functions. Only two criteria could exempt a local authority from the scheme: a true crisis making it unable to provide any care to new UASC (exceptional circumstances) or the local authority believing its UASC population to be over 0.07 per cent.

Medway had made representations that it should be exempt on the basis that it was at capacity but a moderation panel concluded that Medway would not be unduly prejudiced and issued a direction.

The court held that it was neither unlawful nor irrational for ministers to approve a policy that shared the responsibility for looking after UASC across different local authorities and that only a true crisis leading to the breakdown of the local authority should exempt it from the scheme. The court also rejected the claims that the policy excluded many relevant factors that should be taken into account and therefore representations had not been properly considered.

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