In your article (Child asylum seekers in UK forced to share hotel rooms with adults, 30 October) the Home Office gave a misleading figure, stating that “between January 2016 and the year ending June 2021, 58% of asylum applicants whose age was disputed were found to be adults”.
This data is inaccurate, as it does not include the hundreds of children who were initially deemed to be adults by border officials but were later recognised as children and taken into local authority care. It only accounts for those who were directly assigned to a council at the port of entry, and then went through a formal age determination process.
