THE Home Office was dealt a blow today after the High Court ruled that part of its guidance on reuniting child refugees with their families in Britain was unlawful.

Campaigners are now urging ministers to swiftly reunite refugee families whose applications were refused after the judge found that the guidance may have led to “unlawful decisions.”

Safe Passage, a group supporting child refugees in Europe, took legal action against the Home Office over the way caseworkers process family reunification applications.

Under European law, child asylum-seekers abroad can have their claims transferred to another country if they have family there.

But campaigners said that hundreds of children’s applications had been wrongfully refused due to unfair guidance in processing the requests. 

They cited parts which require decision-makers to automatically refuse applications if they fail to consider it after a two-month period and argued that the guidance did not go far enough to establish a relationship between family members. 

In a ruling today, the High Court found that guidance requiring caseworkers to reject a request after two months, even when enquiries had not yet established whether a family link existed, was unlawful. 

Lord Justice Dingemans also ruled that previous guidance which said that “information should be obtained from a local authority only once the family link had been established was erroneous in law.”

He said: “The fact that guidance directed to caseworkers gives advice which is erroneous in law may lead to unlawful decisions.

“This does not assist [unaccompanied child asylum-seekers], who may have been wrongly denied the right to rejoin family members while the claim for asylum was being processed.”

Safe Passage head of legal Jennine Walker said that the successful legal action will “offer hope to many child refugees desperate to safely reunite with their families in Britain, who were wrongly turned away by the Home Office.”

“It should never have taken court action for the Home Office to decide applications fairly and lawfully, and we urge the government to put these wrongs right by swiftly reuniting those refugee families whose applications were refused.”

But the High Court did not overturn the guidance as a whole as only specific parts of the guidance are unlawful, it declared.