Recommendation 5

The Home Office does not yet have a credible long-term strategy for asylum accommodation and local authorities still lack a meaningful say over accommodation decisions. Asylum support costs rose to around £4.0 billion in 2024–25, driven largely by the Home Office’s continued reliance on costly hotel accommodation. At the end of September 2025, around 5 36,300 asylum seekers were in hotels – 2% more than the previous year, although still 35% lower than the peak of around 56,000 in September 2023. Despite repeated commitments, including a pledge to end the use of hotels by 2029, the Home Office has yet to set out a credible long-term strategy to expand dispersal accommodation. We welcome some tentative signs of improved engagement with local authorities, but this remains inconsistent. The Home Office plans to scale up the use of large and medium-sized sites, but past attempts have proved difficult to implement. It still lacks a clear understanding of the right incentives and support needed to deliver its approach to asylum accommodation over the longer term. Its revised 10-year accommodation strategy, originally planned for spring 2024, has also still not been published. Moreover, there is limited evidence that the Home Office fully understands the impact of its decisions on local services. This includes the additional strain placed on councils, such as Glasgow, by increasing numbers of people presenting as homeless after having left Home Office accommodation. While MHCLG outlined several initiatives under development, including capital funding for local authorities, these remain small-scale relative to the wider challenge of a general shortage of social housing across the UK. recommendation The Home Office should, alongside its Treasury Minute response, write to the Committee setting out its long-term accommodation strategy. This should include details on how the intended mix of accommodation in the medium and long term is expected to change under different demand sc