Part 4: Age Assessment Section 56: New Information following Age Assessment or Appeal
Overview: This section details the process for assessing new evidence that may come to light only after an age assessment has been made, including cases where the individual has been through the appeal process.
	Background: Where an age assessment has been carried out and an appeal has either not been brought or has been concluded, this provision provides a mechanism to consider any further information regarding an individual’s age that comes to light. To prevent vexatious applications, the evidence submitted needs to be significant, it will not be sufficient for a person to make representations that amount to little more than a disagreement with earlier findings of fact in respect of their age. Where a decision-maker concludes that the evidence is significant but is nevertheless not sufficient to arrive at a new decision on the person’s age, the individual will continue to be treated by the decision-maker as the age they were previously assessed to be, but the individual will be afforded a new right of appeal to the First-tier Tribunal.
	This section sets out the framework for consideration of new information following an age assessment decision, including after an appeal process has been concluded.
	Subsection 1 defines when this section shall apply, namely when an age assessment has been carried out (referred to in subsection 2 as the "first age assessment") and an appeal has either not been brought or has been concluded, but new information about the person’s age is brought to the attention of the decision maker.
	Subsection 3 sets out the process to be followed where the first age assessment was conducted by a designated person. In the first instance they must satisfy themselves that the new information is significant and if it is, they must conduct a further age assessment on the individual.
	Subsection 4 sets out the process to be followed where the first age assessment was conducted by a local authority. In the first instance they must assess (or ask a designated person to assess) whether the information represents significant new evidence. If a decision is taken that the evidence is significant, then they must undertake a further age assessment or refer the matter to a designated person for a further age assessment.
	Subsection 5 explains what is meant by significant new evidence. Evidence will be considered significant only where there is a realistic prospect of that information leading to the age-disputed person being assessed as an age different to that determined in the first age assessment or on appeal.
	Subsection 6 and Subsection 7 provide that a new assessment undertaken under this section on new information following an age assessment or appeal shall be treated, for the purposes of the wider age assessment sections, in the same way as if it was carried out under section 50 or section 51. The effect of this is that the new age assessment will be appealable to the First-tier Tribunal if it meets the requirements for a right of appeal under section 54.
	Subsection 8 states that if a decision maker is required to conduct a further age assessment, they do not need to revisit issues covered in the first age assessment, where they believe that to be unnecessary. This means that a subsequent age assessment would not need to repeat the processes undertaken in the first age assessment but would instead need to reconsider the first age assessment in light of the new evidence that has been presented.