Recommendation 23

The Home Office had initially planned to be using the Northeye site to accommodate asylum seekers by March 2023, but this was delayed due to issues around the remediation costs and challenges getting the site operational. In March 2023, the Home Office changed the site’s status to a ‘long–term strategic site’, expecting that it would take six to nine months to get the site up and running.76 The National Audit Office reported that when purchasing the Northeye site, the Home Office did not apply lessons from previous asylum accommodation sites.77 Between November 2022 and September 2023, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA), which scrutinises the deliverability of major government programmes, reviewed three iterations of the Home Office’s plans on asylum accommodation, rating each one as ‘red’, meaning that successful delivery of the programme to time, cost and quality appeared to be unachievable.78