The UK High Court ruled Thursday that the Home Secretary acted unlawfully by routinely accommodating unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UAS children) in hotels. The judge also held that Kent County Council acted unlawfully by breaching its legal duty to look after these children.

In a judicial review case brought by the organization Every Child Protected Against Trafficking (ECPAT), Justice Martin Chamberlain investigated Kent County Council’s and the Home Secretary’s failure to properly accommodate UAS children. As UAS children often arrive in Kent via small boats, local authorities are obliged by the Children’s Act 1989 to accommodate and look after them. However, in 2021 Kent County Council claimed they reached their limit on safely caring for UAS children, while still accepting other, non-UAS children into their care. As a result, the Home Secretary commissioned hotels to accommodate UAS children outside the care system. This led to more than 5,400 UAS children living in hotels for an average period of nine to twenty days, with some staying for up to two months.

The High Court judge held that Kent County Council had acted unlawfully by “ceasing to accept responsibility for some newly arriving UAS children while continuing to accept other children into its care.” This differential treatment was a breach of the Children’s Act, which requires local authorities to accommodate all unaccompanied children “irrespective of immigration status, on the basis of need alone.” The judge also highlighted that their failure to safeguard the welfare and provide protective measures to the children in hotels was a further breach of their legal obligations as a local authority. The Home Secretary’s actions were also held to be unlawful. While it is within the Home Secretary’s power to decide how these children are accommodated, housing them in hotels “exceeded the proper limits of her powers.”

As of 17 July 2023, 218 UAS children were being housed in hotels in the UK. Commenting on the case, Patricia Durr, CEO of ECPAT UK said:

This judgement powerfully reaffirms the primacy of the Children Act 1989 and our child welfare statutory framework which does not allow for children to treated differently because of their immigration status. It remains a child protection scandal that so many of the most vulnerable children remain missing at risk of significant harm as a consequence of these unlawful actions by the Secretary of State and Kent County Council . . . We will continue to defend the rights of every child in the UK to live free from exploitation and access the care they are entitled to under the law