5 Mistakes That Get Age Assessments Overturned (And How to Avoid Them)

Having conducted age assessments across local authority, criminal court, and judicial review contexts - and having reviewed hundreds of assessments written by other practitioners - I've seen first-hand what separates assessments that hold up from those that fall apart under scrutiny.

The patterns are remarkably consistent. When assessments are successfully challenged, it's rarely because the court reaches a different view on age. It's almost always because of process failures or analytical weaknesses that were entirely avoidable.

Here are five of the most common - including some that even experienced practitioners overlook.

1. Inadequate signposting

This trips up more assessments than you'd expect. The requirement from AM v Solihull is clear: the young person must understand that this is an age assessment, what that means, and what the consequences of different outcomes will be.

Yet I regularly see assessments where signposting is reduced to a sentence or two, buried in the opening paragraph of the report with no detail about what was actually explained. When challenged, these assessments struggle - because if you can't evidence that proper signposting happened, courts will assume it didn't.

Signposting isn't a formality. It's a substantive requirement that affects the fairness of the entire process. Document it properly.

2. Over-reliance on physical appearance

Most practitioners know not to base an assessment solely on appearance. But the more subtle version of this mistake is giving appearance significant weight while claiming you haven't.

I've read assessments where the analysis section carefully considers multiple factors, then concludes with something like: "Taking all factors into account, and noting the young person's mature physical presentation, I conclude..." That final clause is doing more work than the assessor realises - and opposing counsel will notice.

Physical appearance should be mentioned, but given limited weight and never positioned as a deciding factor. If your conclusion would change without the appearance observation, you've weighted it too heavily.

3. Treating inconsistencies as determinative

Experienced practitioners know that inconsistencies don't automatically mean deception. But there's a difference between knowing this and applying it properly in analysis.

The mistake I see repeatedly is noting inconsistencies, briefly acknowledging alternative explanations ("this could reflect trauma or interpreter error"), then proceeding to treat the inconsistencies as undermining credibility anyway. The alternative explanations become a box-ticking exercise rather than genuine analytical considerations.

If you're going to discount trauma or interpretation as explanations, you need to say why - what about this particular inconsistency, in this particular context, leads you to conclude it's more likely to reflect dishonesty than the alternatives? That's the analysis that's often missing.

4. Perfunctory minded-to process

The minded-to stage isn't just about telling the young person you're inclined to assess them as an adult. It's about giving them a genuine opportunity to respond to the specific concerns driving that view.

A minded-to that says "we're minded to assess you as over 18 because of concerns about your account" is too vague to be meaningful. The young person needs to know which aspects of their account concern you and why, so they can address those specific points.

I've seen assessments overturned not because minded-to was skipped entirely, but because it was done so superficially that it didn't constitute a fair opportunity to respond. Procedure matters, but so does substance.

5. Analysis that doesn't show the weighing

This is perhaps the most common weakness in assessments by otherwise competent practitioners. The information-gathering is thorough, the report is well-structured, but when you reach the analysis section, there's a gap between the evidence and the conclusion.

Strong analysis makes the weighing explicit. It identifies which factors point towards the claimed age, which raise concerns, and explains why certain factors are given more weight than others. It addresses contradictory evidence rather than skating past it.

If a reader can't follow the logical path from your evidence to your conclusion, your analysis isn't doing its job - and that's what gets exposed under cross-examination or judicial review.

Building defensible practice

These aren't mistakes made by careless practitioners. They're patterns I see in assessments by experienced social workers who haven't had the opportunity to learn from the feedback loop of legal challenge.

That's why I've developed Age Assessment Foundations - an online training course covering the legal framework, planning, conducting assessments, analysis, and report writing. It's designed as a comprehensive grounding in Merton-compliant practice, whether you're relatively new to age assessments or looking to tighten up your approach.

This is the first course in a series. More advanced training covering complex cases, court work, and specialist areas is in development.