Court rules lack of secure accommodation in London unlawful
Fiona Simpson
Friday, July 30, 2021
A lack of secure accommodation for children arrested in London is unlawful, the Court of Appeal has ruled.
The ruling came as part of an appeal by children’s legal charity Just for Kids Law against a previous High Court ruling which found Waltham Forest Council, in east London, was not at fault for failing to find suitable alternative accommodation for a 17-year-old who had been arrested on suspicion of possession of a knife and robbery in 2018.
Despite a request from police for Waltham Forest to find secure accommodation for the teenager, he was forced to remain in police custody overnight.
Just for Kids Law argued that despite the case involving just one local authority, the issue is prevalent across the capital due to a lack of secure children’s homes.
Following an appeal today (30 July), judges Lady Justice King, Lord Justice Singh and Sir Patrick Elias agreed that the lack of such accommodation across the capital meant that Waltham Forest did not have a reasonable system in place to meet requests by the police to accommodate the child.
“The system was inherently likely to fail in the sense that, as a matter of routine, the answer to a police request would be “no”,” the court found.
Recent analysis of secure accommodation in England by Ofsted found that there are just 13 secure children’s homes in operation, none of which are in London.
The court found that Waltham Forest was “apparently unaware of exactly which accommodation was potentially available” to meet requests by police to find suitable accommodation.
This “reinforces my conclusion that no reasonable system was in place”, Lady Justice King said.
Jennifer Twite, head of strategic litigation at Just for Kids Law, said: “It is a national scandal that we do not provide proper accommodation for our most vulnerable children when they are denied bail. It has been known for a long time that there are insufficient secure children’s homes, and the fact that there are none in the London area is unbelievable. I hope that this case demonstrates the current position is both unlawful and unacceptable and will lead to serious improvement in this area.”
Louisa McGeehan, chief executive of the charity, added: “The government’s own national guidance makes clear that police cells are intimidating, potentially harmful environments designed to detain adults suspected of criminal activity. Unfortunately, the official guidance is not always followed, and all too often children end up spending the night in police cells when they have been arrested in a state of distress.
“The government must work with local authorities to help them to comply with their legal duties to provide alternative accommodation for children who are detained by the police.”
A Waltham Forest Council spokesperson said: “We take our duties around young people in police custody extremely seriously and their welfare needs are always the top priority. The nearest overnight secure accommodation found for the 17-year-old boy in this case was 90 miles. As he was expected in court the next morning this was both impractical and not in his interests.
“The national scarcity of secure accommodation is both longstanding and something that needs resolving in the interests of young people. We have been working with other local authorities in London to try and find a permanent solution to this issue and have put a proposal to the government of two sites in the capital that will resolve this issue and ensure young people are supported during what is a traumatic time in their lives.
“We will be lodging an appeal to this ruling in due course.”
Meanwhile, latest statistics from the Ministry of Justice revealed that there were 534 children in custody in England and Wales in May this year.
In the year leading to March 2021, there was 492 incidents of self-harm, including 21 hospitalisations, and 1,130 incidents of assault within the youth custody estate, according to the figures.
They also show that between July and September 2019, 33 per cent of young offenders reoffended compared with 25 per cent of adults.
Commenting on the figures, shadow minister for victims and youth justice, Anna McMorrin, said: “Youth reoffending rates remain unacceptable, well above adult figures, while incidences of self-harm and assault are disproportionately high compared to the number of children in custody.”
