Case No. UKUT-00338-(IAC)

CG [2022] UKUT 23 (IAC). Post-Script – The Transfer of Age Assessments to the FtT70.By Part 4 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and from a date to be appointed, challenges to age assessment decisions made by a local authority (or the Secretary of State) will be brought by way of appeal to the First-tier Tribunal rather than proceedings commenced in the Administrative Court and transferred to the Upper Tribunal. By s54(3) the Tribunal’s task in such an appeal is to determine the appellant’s age on the balance of probabilities and to assign a date of birth to him or her. By s54(5), a determination of age on such an appeal is binding on the Secretary of State for the Home Department and on a local authority. 71.Evidently, in such an appeal, there is no duty of candour upon an applicant. There is no duty of disclosure comparable to that which appears in the CPR. Indeed, the only duty upon a respondent to such an appeal is not knowingly to mislead: Nimo (appeals: duty of disclosure) [2020] UKUT 88 (IAC). We doubt that either the parties’ duty to co-operate with the First-tier Tribunal or Baroness Hale’s as-yet undeveloped statement about a ‘co-operative process of investigation’ in