Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 21
Seventy-Sixth Report - The Asylum Transformation Programme
Published 27 Oct 2023
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee The Asylum Transformation Programme All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The Home Office told us that it is working with the Local Government Association and individual councils and was “talking about all the big issues that arise, whether that is housing capacity, health, safeguarding and so on”.62 Specifically on room-sharing, the Home Office said it was “talking that through nationally and individually with councils”.63 We pointed out that councils had already received letters telling them how many more people would need to be accommodated in hotels. The Home Office acknowledged that its communications had not been about whether the increase in room-sharing will happen, 51 Q 61 52 House of Commons Library, Asylum accommodation: hotels, vessels and large-scale sites, CBP 9831, 7 July 2023 53 Q 63 54 Qq 89–90 55 Q 91 56 Qq 66–68 57 Q 66 58 Q 115 59 Correspondence from the Home Office to PAC dated 18 August 2023 60 Committee of Public Accounts, Asylum accommodation and support transformation programme, Twenty-Fifth Report of Session 2019–21, HC 683, 20 November 2020 61 HM Treasury, Government responses to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Twenty-Fifth to the Twenty- Ninth reports from Session 2019–21, CP 376, February 2021 62 Qq 81, 143 63 Qq 85–86 14 The Asylum Transformation Programme but about how it will be done and how risks will be managed.64 The Home Office could not answer a specific question asking why Hull City Council received a letter from the Home Office saying that it was halting further increases in the asylum seeking population due to unsustainable pressures in the area, only to receive another letter 10 days later saying it would double the number of people in hotels in the city.65 In a letter the Home Office sent to us on 18 August 2023, it said that dispersed accommodation procurement in Hull was paused, except for any accommodation already in the process of being procured. It said that room sharing in hotels was treated separately from dispersed accommodation.66
From: Public Accounts Committee, Seventy-Sixth Report - The Asylum Transformation Programme (HC 1334), 27 October 2023
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 14 February 2024 (deadline 27 December 2023).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees with the Committee's recommendations on the asylum backlog, the streamlined process and local authority engagement, and disagrees with those on hotels, safeguarding and publishing the Programme Business Case.
- On the backlog, the government agrees with the recommendation, describes it as implemented and says the legacy backlog target has been met; it says flow claims "will be prioritised from 2024 onwards".
- On hotels, it disagrees with the recommendation to set out how and by when it will stop using them, but says it has "plans in place to close over 50 hotels before the end of January 2024" and will keep modelling assumptions "under regular review".
- On local authorities, it agrees, with a target implementation date of "iterative to December 2025", and says pilots with London, Wales and South West England will run between January and March 2024.
- It disagrees with publishing the Programme Business Case, stating that "it is not standard practice" to do so, and offers a private meeting with the Committee once HM Treasury approves it, which it anticipates by "the Summer of 2024".