Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 20
20
Accepted
Home Office lacks a clear timeline for fully phasing out asylum seeker hotel accommodation.
Conclusion
Since 2020, the Home Office has increasingly used hotels to accommodate people seeking asylum, as demand for accommodation increased and there was an insufficient supply of alternative accommodation. In October 2023, the Home Office announced that it intended to stop using some of its 400 asylum hotels in the coming months.32 The Home Office told us that there were currently around 40,000 asylum seekers in hotels, but that it had stopped using more than 100 hotels. We asked the Home Office whether this was the result of more cases being processed, and the extent to which large sites had contributed to this. It told us that there were a number of reasons it had been able to exit hotels. It explained that fewer people had arrived in 2023 than in the previous year, and that it had made “all the decisions” on the legacy backlog that enabled people who were granted asylum to leave accommodation. It also told us that it had identified a further 11,500 beds within the current hotel estate through “Operation Maximise”, which involved people sharing rooms. We asked the Home Office when it would stop using hotels in people’s communities to accommodate asylum seekers, but the Home Office told us that, although it would continue to close more hotels, it was “very difficult to put a time on that, because of the uncertainties”.33
Government Response Summary
The government will establish a working group with the Local Government Association and local authority leads to address issues related to asylum casework and move-on, and commits to sharing regular, timely data and management information through tools like the Discontinuation Prediction Tool and the forthcoming Place Based Visibility Tool.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
4.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented 4.2 The Home Office will establish a working group with the Local Government Association and Local Authority Chief Executive regional leads to address issues raised at the national Asylum, Resettlement Councils Senior Engagement Group. This group will identify, and address issues related to Asylum Casework and Move On from asylum accommodation. 4.3 Central to Home Office plans to collaborate and work with Local Authorities (LAs) is sharing regular, timely and relevant data and Management Information to allow effective planning. We are building a number of tools to provide updates to individual Local Authorities. The Discontinuation Prediction Tool (DPT) is shared weekly with Strategic Migration Partners (SMPs) for onward sharing with LAs to provide a 4-week prediction of cases (by group size). This enables LAs to anticipate potential demand on their services and to support a smoother transition from Home Office accommodation to mainstream services. The Place Based Visibility Tool (PBVT) which shows pre-decision asylum cases specific to an area will be built and shared once plans for asylum casework are confirmed and will include Resettlement and Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children/National Transfer Scheme data. The department will look to further develop LA reporting dependent on Home Office Data Infrastructure.