Recommendation 1

Instead of acting as a short-term contingency measure, the use of hotels has become a widespread and embedded part of the asylum accommodation system, increasing the cost of the asylum accommodation contracts by billions of pounds beyond the original forecast. This is the result of a series of failures by the Home Office in the design of the original contracts, and a manifest failure by the Home Office to grip the contracts and respond to increasing demand. The evidence we have examined leads us to conclude that providers can reap greater profits by prioritising the use of hotels over procuring other, more suitable forms of accommodation. Going forward, the Government will need to design a system that can flexibly respond to fluctuating demand while setting appropriate incentives for providers to maintain value for money. (Conclusion, Paragraph 31)