Recommendation 28

The NAO, Public Accounts Committee and Home Affairs Select Committee have each identified longstanding weaknesses in how the Home Office manages its asylum accommodation contracts. The NAO’s May 2025 briefing found that projected spending under the asylum accommodation and support contracts had risen from £4.5 billion to £15.3 billion, and highlighted that hotels accounted for 76% of annual costs while offering limited levers for the Home Office to control profitability.72 Our February 2025 report on Northeye identified wider commercial weaknesses in the Home Office, including bypassing key controls, insufficient due diligence, and an internal culture that allowed contract-management safeguards to be “easily abandoned” under pressure.73 The Home Affairs Committee similarly found in October 2025 that contract design and oversight had been “chaotic”, with limited mechanisms to challenge or recover excess profits.74