Background Part 2: Courts and Justice Section 19: Varying designation of authorities responsible for remanded young persons
26.Section 102(6) of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (“2012 Act”) requires the court to designate a local authority as the designated authority for a child remanded to youth detention accommodation. A designation has various consequences. One consequence is to make the designated authority liable for the costs of the remand to youth detention accommodation. Regulations made under section 103(2) of the 2012 Act provide for the recovery of a proportion of these costs by the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (“the YJB”) from the designated authority. The youth remand provisions of the 2012 Act, and regulations under section 103(2) of that Act, came into force on 3rd December 2012. In addition, new regulations providing for the recovery from the designated authority of the full costs of the remand to youth detention accommodation were brought into force on 1st April 2013.
27.Section 102(7) of the 2012 Act provides for the court to designate any authority which is already looking after the child. If there is no such authority, the court is to designate either the authority in which the child habitually resides (“the home authority”) or that in whose area the offence was committed. Section 19 provides that, where the child is not looked after, the court is ordinarily to designate the home authority. However, in some cases the court may not be able to correctly establish the identity of the home authority at the initial remand hearing. It will in those cases designate a different authority. A designation may be changed at a later remand hearing, but any change only has effect from the point at which the change is made. As such the YJB may only recover costs of the remand to youth detention accommodation from the newly designated authority which relate to the period after the change has been made (but not costs which relate to the period before the change was made – for which the initially designated authority remains liable).
28.Section 19 amends section 102 of the 2012 Act to allow a court to make a ‘replacement designation.’ A replacement designation has the effect that the newly designated authority is – for the purpose of liability for the costs of remand to youth detention accommodation – designated during the period before the replacement designation was made. This therefore allows regulations to provide for the YJB to recover from this designated authority the costs of remand to youth detention accommodation in relation to that period of remand.