Select committee: Home Affairs Committee
Conclusion 35
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 ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The Home Office has failed to achieve its targets for an equitable distribution of asylum seekers. Asylum accommodation is still heavily concentrated in particular areas, often areas of high deprivation. Many local authorities do not have faith that the department will achieve a fair and equitable distribution of accommodation. The Home Office has failed to ensure providers deliver in line with its plans—something that should have been considered when the contracts were set up—and has not succeeded in allaying concerns that providers are procuring on the basis of cost, rather than equity. We recognise that there are substantial barriers to achieving the plans in some areas, due to the broader failure of house building rates and access to services to keep pace with population growth, but we have seen no evidence that the Home Office has a credible plan for meeting its targets to make the distribution of asylum accommodation more equitable. (Conclusion, Paragraph 154)
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.