Select committee: Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 30
4th Report – The Home Office's management of asylum accommodation
Published 27 Oct 2025
Addressed to Home Office
Home Affairs Committee Asylum accommodation All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
We recommend that the Home Office strengthens its approach to safeguarding by: a. Ensuring that there is a robust framework for overseeing and auditing how safeguarding policies and processes are applied on the ground by contractors and subcontractors; b. Ensuring that staff working directly with asylum seekers receive adequate safeguarding training; c. Setting performance measures for safeguarding in the contracts, which allow the department to penalise providers who fail to meet safeguarding standards; d. Urgently reviewing its processes for identifying risks and vulnerabilities and sharing these with accommodation providers and statutory partners; and e. Using the data it receives through the Safeguarding Hub to more proactively monitor safeguarding concerns, including outcomes of incidents and referrals. (Recommendation, Paragraph 121) 102 Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children
From: Home Affairs Committee, 4th Report – The Home Office's management of asylum accommodation (HC 580), 27 October 2025
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 22 January 2026 (deadline 27 December 2025).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government sets its response within its 'Restoring Order and Control' programme, committing to exit asylum hotels 'as soon as possible', while setting out some actions already taken and giving reasons where it does not agree with a recommendation.
- On hotels, the government says it will close them "as soon as possible, and by the end of this Parliament", noting use has fallen from over 400 at its peak to 197 as of 5 January 2026. It does not comment on the timing of individual closures.
- On contract management, it says it has strengthened capability and commissioned an independent review led by Mark Beaton, and reports recovering £74 million in profit share and service credits in the current financial year.
- It says the Home Office "will seek to introduce" a more rigorous profit-share methodology in future contracts, and that revised KPI amendments "will be finalised by February 2026".
- It does not agree to account for Contingency Accommodation directly in the National Allocation Plans, saying this would limit its ability to increase Dispersal Accommodation in areas that already host Contingency Accommodation.