A charity has lost a High Court bid over 23 children who have disappeared from a Home Office-run hotel.
Article 39, a charity which advocates for children in institutions, had asked the court to “take a role” in the “exceptional” case of the missing children, who disappeared from a hotel in Brighton and Hove, Sussex.
The children are all boys and are mostly 17 years old, with 21 of them Albanian citizens.
At a hearing in April, lawyers for the charity said the young people could be made wards of court – a move which gives the court overarching responsibility for a child.
But in a judgment on Friday, Mrs Justice Lieven dismissed the charity’s bid, finding: “This is not an appropriate case in which the court should or could exercise its wardship jurisdiction.”
The court previously heard the children “virtually universally go missing within days, if not a day” after arriving at the hotel, with some missing for five months.
And Amanda Weston KC, for Article 39, told the hearing that the missing children are “intensely vulnerable”.
Joanne Clement KC, for the Department for Education, said Brighton and Hove City Council “recognises they have duties to these children”.
In her ruling, Mrs Justice Lieven said that wardship “cannot and should not be used where there are statutory powers in place that can essentially do the same job”.
She continued: “If the children were present in Brighton and Hove and met the statutory criteria, then they would be the responsibility of a local authority, in all probability Brighton and Hove.
“The difficulty that arises on the facts of this case is that the children are missing.
“Therefore, it is not possible to know whether at the present time they are living in Brighton and Hove or elsewhere, and therefore which local authority is responsible for them.”
The judge added: “The agency that then has responsibility for finding the children and thus allowing them to fall within a specific local authority’s powers and duties is the police, both the Sussex Police and any national police bodies that can be engaged.”
She said that Sussex Police are “engaged in trying to trace the missing children”.
Mrs Justice Lieven later added that if the agencies involved were not using their powers correctly, a claim could be made in a different part of the High Court, but “there is no evidence that is the case”.
