Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
7th Report - Asylum accommodation: Home Office acquisition of former HMP Northeye
Public Accounts Committee
HC 361
Published 5 February 2025
Recommendations
3
Accepted
Set out staffing levels and plans for strengthening commercial capability within asylum accommodation team.
Recommendation
The Home Office failed to ensure it had sufficient capability to manage the commercial and property risks during its acquisition of the Northeye site. In 2023, the Home Office was acquiring several large asylum accommodation sites at the same time …
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Government Response Summary
The government accepts the recommendation, detailing increased commercial and property capability within the Home Office's asylum accommodation team, including new senior appointments, an additional Commercial Specialist, and an increase of three professionally qualified resources since the Northeye acquisition. It also provides detailed staffing numbers and qualifications for property, facilities management, and health and safety teams.
HM Treasury
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Conclusions (30)
2
Conclusion
In its haste to purchase the Northeye site, the Home Office ignored opportunities to properly understand the risks and costs of developing it, leading to poor value for money for the taxpayer. The Home Office asserts it did a “fair amount” of due diligence before acquiring the Northeye 4 site, …
4
Conclusion
We are concerned that the Home Office’s culture allowed it to override too easily the controls and processes in place to protect taxpayers’ money. The Home Office appears to have been operating in crisis mode for several years and now asserts that it is moving back to business- as-usual. It …
5
Conclusion
We are not convinced that the Home Office has learned the lessons it identified from its costly acquisitions of large sites. The Home Office claims it has identified “over 1,000” lessons from its acquisition of large asylum accommodation sites. It argues that it had to be innovative in its approach …
6
Conclusion
We are concerned that the Home Office’s work to resolve the asylum backlog may increase costs elsewhere, such as for Local Authorities or the Ministry of Justice. The Home Office has a track record of poor engagement with local authorities, and some of the written evidence submitted to us illustrates …
1
Conclusion
On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from the Home Office about its approach to acquiring the Northeye site in East Sussex to use for asylum accommodation.1
7
Conclusion
When we asked the Home Office whether it had rushed its decision to acquire the Northeye site, the Home Office told us it was “operating at pace” to address the growing number of people claiming asylum. The Home Office said Ministers were “pushing” the department to progress quickly with this …
8
Conclusion
In 2023, the Home Office was acquiring several large asylum accommodation sites at the same time, including the Bibby Stokholm vessel in Dorset and the former RAF base in Scampton, Lincolnshire.16 The Home Office has spent more than £34 million on the Bibby Stockholm vessel, which will be not be …
9
Conclusion
In July 2024, the government announced the cancellation of the Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda (MEDP).21 We noted that nobody had been removed under the scheme, and the Department told us that there were no flights under the scheme other than for four voluntary 12 Q 4 13 …
10
Conclusion
We were concerned by the amount of public money the Home Office has spent on these projects, which have either been abandoned or have not delivered the expected benefits. During our evidence session, we questioned the Home Office on this, and it stressed again that it “acted with pace” to …
11
Conclusion
The Home Office commissioned some surveys but not a complete ‘Red Book’ survey and sought some additional professional advice on the state of the Northeye site before deciding to purchase it. Preliminary surveys of the site warned of potentially high remediation costs. For example, the planning appraisal, completed in February …
12
Conclusion
When we asked the Home Office what it had done to understand the risks before acquiring the Northeye site, it told us it did a “fair amount of due diligence” and repeatedly emphasised that “with the benefit of hindsight” 22 Qq 52, 53 23 Q 7; Home Office, Breakdown of …
13
Conclusion
Both the Ministry of Justice’s property function, which provided an outsourced property service to the Home Office, and the Home Office’s external property advisers recommended conducting a ‘Red Book’ valuation for the site, as typically required for a site requiring remediation. However, the Home Office negotiated the purchase of the …
14
Conclusion
The Home Office assessed the acquisition against the Accounting Officer tests, concluding that the proposal met the tests of regularity, propriety and feasibility, presented in the Accounting Officer Advice. The assessment also found that the use of the site for asylum accommodation represented value for money when compared with the …
15
Conclusion
The Small Ministerial Group, established around November 2022, implemented concessions to the process of acquiring sites, including dispensing with the requirement for a full business case before approving acquisitions. The Home Office began drafting an outline business case for the acquisition of the Northeye site, dated 1 March 2023, but …
16
Conclusion
Since 2016, the Home Office has had a shared-services agreement with the Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ’s) property function to provide a range of property services on behalf of the Home Office. For the Northeye acquisition, the Home Office made limited use of this arrangement, only engaging a firm through the …
17
Conclusion
In April 2021, the Home Office contracted staff who had previously worked under the Ministry of Justice’s property function to provide in-house expertise in commercial property transactions. From August 2022, the contracted staff managed the acquisition of the Home Office’s interests in the Northeye site.49 The National Audit Office reported …
18
Conclusion
The contract for the Northeye acquisition contained conditions that meant that the longer it took the Home Office to complete the purchase beyond a six–week timeframe, the more money it would pay. The National Audit Office reported that despite these terms being questioned by some of the Home Office’s advisers, …
19
Conclusion
In May 2024, the previous Public Accounts Committee reported on the Home Office’s development of alternative asylum accommodation to hotels, including large sites at Scampton and Wethersfield, the Bibby Stockholm vessel, and former student accommodation in Huddersfield. The Committee found that the Home Office’s value for money assessments of the …
20
Conclusion
We asked the Home Office why, despite spending large sums of public money on these large sites, many of them did not achieve the expected benefits. It explained that both the previous and current government had strategies to exit hotel accommodation for asylum seekers.63 The Home Office explained that the …
21
Conclusion
We were concerned about a prevailing culture within the Home Office that normalises operating in an emergency and led it to weaken approval processes when acquiring large sites like Northeye. Moreover, it has often appeared that the Home Office has prioritised appearing to address the issue of asylum accommodation over …
22
Conclusion
When the Chief Secretary to the Treasury approved the acquisition of the Northeye site on 25 March 2023, he noted that the value-for-money case was marginal and based on assumptions that were highly uncertain.71 The cost of remediating the building of asbestos and removing contaminated ground estimated at £20 million …
23
Conclusion
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 …
24
Conclusion
The second of the IPA reviews, in February 2023, concluded that, while the Home Office had identified learning in relation to the failed site at Linton- on-Ouse, these lessons were not being applied to some of the asylum accommodation sites it was delivering at the time. The IPA stated that …
25
Conclusion
When we questioned the Home Office about repeated mistakes in its acquisitions of large sites, it explained that it was learning from multiple projects at the same time. The Home Office informed us that its lessons learned review identified over 1,000 lessons. 82 When asked if it planned to publish …
26
Conclusion
During our evidence session, the Home Office described its approach to acquiring large sites as “entrepreneurial”. It explained that this strategy was about piloting and testing approaches while operating at speed with limited information.90 The Home Office explained this as a good approach for identifying what works, quickly learning from …
27
Conclusion
The Autumn Budget 2024 set a target for the Home Office to deliver significant savings by 2026.93 Moreover, following the cancelled Rwanda scheme, the current government has promised to resume processing asylum decisions for those previously considered as inadmissible. Under the former government, the Home Office was not processing cases …
28
Conclusion
The Home Office explained it plans to reduce costs quickly, in part, by focusing on upstream measures, such as controlling irregular arrivals through the new Border Security Command. In our evidence session, the Home Office described the Border Security Command as the “start of a very long haul,” emphasising that …
29
Conclusion
Since 2020, the Home Office has increasingly used hotels to accommodate asylum seekers due to rising demand and a shortage of alternative accommodation. The previous Public Accounts Committee had raised concerns about the Home Office’s lack of effective engagement with local authorities regarding the impact of such accommodation on local …
30
Conclusion
The National Audit Office reported that the increase in asylum decisions had placed greater pressure on local authorities to support refugees in finding accommodation and increased the risk of homelessness and rough sleeping.107 The previous Public Accounts Committee also raised concerns about the Home Office paying higher rates for limited …
31
Conclusion
People who are refused asylum by the Home Office can appeal the decision in the immigration and asylum tribunal, administered by HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS). The increased number of refusals brought about by more decisions being made is likely to increase the number of appeals. In June 2023, …