The government has paid out millions of pounds after wrongly classing asylum-seeking children as adults, BuzzFeed News can reveal.

Legal costs, including compensatory damages and barristers' fees, totalled £4,437,410 as a result of losing 262 court cases over age disputes since 2010–11. The amount spent on each case over the six-year period has nearly doubled to £24,771.

Croydon council, which runs the only Home Office asylum-seeker screening unit in the country, provided the figures under freedom of information laws.



One source with experience of working on hundreds of age assessments claimed councils in the UK are overstating the ages of asylum-seekers in order to cut costs.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are involved in sensitive cases, said: “It's complicated and very cruel, it's ignoring best practice and designed to save money. These minors are expendable, I fear. I'm a bit exhausted from the anxiety of seeing the blatant disregard for what are nearly always children.”

Judith Dennis, policy manager at the Refugee Council, told BuzzFeed News: “The human and financial costs of local authorities wrongly judging children to be adults are wholly unacceptable.



“If local authorities want to avoid these penalties then it’s vital they prioritise getting their decisions right the first time around by following good-practice guidance and assessing children’s ages lawfully.”