Unaccompanied child asylum housing
Absence of a clear, strategic plan for transitioning unaccompanied asylum-seeking children out of hotel accommodation.
50 items
6 sources
Strongest theme matches
Mixed across source types and ranked by classifier confidence plus text match strength.
Committee recommendation
100match
#101 - Secure more appropriate accommodation with urgency for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
Clearly it is not appropriate to accommodate children in hotels, particularly unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. The Government needs to show greater urgency in securing more appropriate accommodation, that is suitable for the needs of children, notwithstanding the need to keep families together.
Matched on
terms: asylum, child, unaccompanied
ICIBI recommendation
100match
An inspection of the use of hotels for housing unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) March - May 2022
Set out a clear strategy for exiting hotels used for UAS children in partnership with Kent County Council, taking account of the High Court’s directions.
Matched on
terms: asylum, child, housing, unaccompanied
ICIBI recommendation
100match
A re-inspection of the use of hotels for housing unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (September – October 2023)
Set out a clear strategy for exiting hotels used for UAS children in partnership with Kent County Council, taking account of the High Court’s directions.
Matched on
terms: asylum, child, housing, unaccompanied
Committee recommendation
95match
#100 - Unaccompanied children in contingency accommodation highly vulnerable to trafficking and going missing.
Unaccompanied children living in contingency accommodation are particularly vulnerable to being trafficked, or re-trafficked. Between July 2021 and 19 October 2022, there were 391 episodes where children went missing from hotels. This is unacceptable.
Matched on
terms: child, unaccompanied
LGO / SPSO decision
80match
23-020-852 - Kent County Council
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s decision to use a building close to the complainant’s home to house unaccompanied asylum seeker children. There is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s actions to justify an investigation.
Matched on
terms: asylum, child, unaccompanied
Committee recommendation
80match
#10 - Rising care numbers demand cross-departmental action to address external contributing factors.
The pressure caused by rising numbers of children coming into care is putting serious strain on the system. The only way to effectively reduce these numbers is to address the factors outside the care system which are contributing to this demand, including poverty, poor parental mental health, the number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, and extra- 83 familial harms....
Matched on
terms: asylum, child, housing, unaccompanied
ICIBI recommendation
77match
An inspection of contingency asylum accommodation for families with children in Northern Ireland (May – June 2023)
The Home Office should:
Matched on
terms: asylum, child
Committee recommendation
70match
#21 - Prioritise closure of unsuitable asylum hotels causing harm and significant pressure on services.
When planning the closure of the hotels, the Home Office should prioritise the closure of manifestly unsuitable hotels—such as those in remote areas and near limited infrastructure—that cause the most harm to their residents and place the most pressure on local services, and also the closure of hotels in areas that have experienced significant community cohesion issues. The...
Matched on
terms: asylum
Committee recommendation
70match
#20 - Inappropriate asylum hotel use causes significant harm and impacts community cohesion.
Long stays in inappropriate hotels are often deeply harmful to the people accommodated there. Local services are left to respond to these impacts and fill the gaps where the basic needs of asylum seekers are not being met. The use of hotels has at times had a significant impact on community cohesion, which cannot be underestimated. The closure...
Matched on
terms: asylum
IMB recommendation
69match
Kent Coast Short Term Holding Facilities (STHF) (2024)
The Board has been informed that unaccompanied children should not go through an initial age decision interview during night hours, unless in exceptional circumstances. This results in some individuals resting on wooden benches overnight. The Board has requested, for several months, that mats should be provided for them to sleep on. The Board has also requested that the...
Matched on
terms: child, unaccompanied
Committee recommendation
69match
#2 - Set out plans for a flexible, cost-minimising asylum accommodation system, incentivising hotel exits.
We recommend that the Home Office sets out plans for an asylum accommodation system that can flexibly respond to changing demand, whilst minimising potential costs to the taxpayer. In the short term, the Home Office should identify and implement any possible action it can take to direct and incentivise providers to identify alternative accommodation and exit hotels. The...
Matched on
terms: asylum
Committee recommendation
67match
#21 - Thirty-Fourth Report - Local Government Finance System: Overview and Challenges
We have previously been critical of the Department for Education’s understanding of costs within children’s social care services, and we have not yet been reassured that funding for local authorities to support unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, and care leavers who were formerly unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, is sufficient.84 When pressed, the Department directed us towards the Home Office as the...
Matched on
terms: asylum, child, unaccompanied
Committee recommendation
64match
#12 - Home Office has established four large asylum accommodation sites with substantial costs and capacity.
The Home Office has established four large accommodation sites – the Bibby Stockholm vessel in Dorset, former RAF bases in Wethersfield, Essex and Scampton, Lincolnshire, and former student accommodation in Huddersfield. The Home Office estimated that, by the end of March 2024, it had spent £230 million on the sites, and it expected the Large Sites Programme to...
Matched on
terms: asylum, housing
Committee recommendation
61match
#1 - Home Office failures led to costly, widespread hotel use in asylum accommodation.
Instead of acting as a short-term contingency measure, the use of hotels has become a widespread and embedded part of the asylum accommodation system, increasing the cost of the asylum accommodation contracts by billions of pounds beyond the original forecast. This is the result of a series of failures by the Home Office in the design of the...
Matched on
terms: asylum
Committee recommendation
60match
#30 - Tenth Report - The humanitarian situation in Tigray
The International Medical Corps has reported large displacements in Western Tigray heading towards the town of Shire, where approximately 1,500 people were arriving each day. Edward Brown, World Vision Ethiopia, gave us a broadly similar figure but he drew our attention to the fact that this included hundreds of unaccompanied children.73 The OCHA situation update for 22 March...
Matched on
terms: child, unaccompanied
IMB recommendation
59match
South and East Short Term Holding Facilities (STHF) (2025)
The Board recommends that the Home Office considers strengthening the relationship between Border Force and Children’s Services. The Board notes there is no service level agreement between BF and Children’s Services, resulting in some unaccompanied children waiting for 16 or 17 hours for support, as noted in 7.4.
Matched on
terms: child, unaccompanied
Committee recommendation
55match
#18 - Home Office lacks clear plan and timeline for ending asylum hotel accommodation.
The Home Office said it is very difficult to estimate how many people will claim asylum because of uncertain migration patterns, but that it has low, medium and high scenarios that it uses for planning purposes.53 When we asked the Home Office when it planned to stop using hotels for people waiting for their asylum decision, it said...
Matched on
terms: asylum
IMB recommendation
53match
Dover (2020)
Processes for dealing with unaccompanied minors arriving should be urgently reviewed to address the lengths of time spent waiting in the holding rooms or the Atrium before being placed in care.
Matched on
terms: unaccompanied
IMB recommendation
53match
London STHF (2024)
Unaccompanied minors are not always allocated a responsible adult when they are in the CWA. We would like each minor to be accompanied by a responsible adult.
Matched on
terms: unaccompanied
Committee recommendation
52match
#35 - Third Report - Children in poverty: Measurement and targets
We recommend that DWP works with the Office for National Statistics to produce robust income-related poverty and income data on children and their families with no recourse to public funds. DWP should write to us by June 2022 to give an update on its progress in addressing this unsustainable gap.
Matched on
terms: child
Committee recommendation
52match
#34 - Third Report - Children in poverty: Measurement and targets
Income poverty data on children whose parents have no recourse to public funds is limited. DWP’s Family Resources Survey picks up very small numbers of these children and the Department does not collect significant administrative data on them because their parents are not normally entitled to its benefits and services. This blind-spot in DWP’s understanding of children in...
Matched on
terms: child
Committee recommendation
48match
#12 - High in-country refugee costs are disproportionately classified as ODA, diverting funds from global poor.
The Committee notes the continuing badging of high levels of Government spending on refugee costs within the UK as ODA with dismay. Whilst the Spending Review commits to ending the use of asylum hotels in this Parliament, the level of the UK’s in-country support for the poorest people in the world should not be dependent on the success...
Matched on
terms: asylum
IMB recommendation
48match
Heathrow and City airports Short Term Holding Facilities (2021)
The Board repeats its recommendation that the Home Office should substantially improve the facilities for families and children in Terminal 5. These are currently excessively cramped and they lack integrated toilet, shower and baby-changing facilities.
Matched on
terms: child
IMB annual report
47match
Heathrow Short Term Holding Facility (2020)
This IMB report for Short Term Holding Facilities at London Heathrow, London City Airports, and Becket and Eaton House Reporting Centres (Feb 2019-Jan 2020) highlights concerns about the suitability of accommodation for longer stays and children, and overcrowding due to transport delays. Key issues include detainee access to medication and legal advice, the quality of DCO inductions and...
Matched on
terms: child
IMB recommendation
47match
Heathrow Short Term Holding Facility (2020)
[London Heathrow Airport] The Detention Contractor should arrange for a DCO or other responsible adult to sit in the family holding room with a young or otherwise vulnerable unaccompanied child (para. 6.6).
Matched on
terms: child, unaccompanied
Committee recommendation
46match
#17 - Home Office pays for thousands of empty hotel rooms as buffer, facing accommodation challenges.
The Home Office also told us that it pays for around 5,000 empty hotel rooms as a ‘buffer’ in case it needs more space than exists at its initial holding facilities such as Manston, where many asylum seekers are first taken when they arrive in the UK.49 This buffer is on top of what it terms ‘ringfenced hotels’...
Matched on
terms: asylum
IMB recommendation
43match
Werrington (2024)
With the closure of YOI Cookham Wood, the Board believes it is inhumane that about a quarter of young people, who are legally recognised as children, are accommodated at Werrington from the other end of the country, far away from family? How does the Minister intend to address this serious issue?
Matched on
terms: child
Committee recommendation
43match
#19 - Home Office fails to provide clarity on financial savings from asylum hotel room-sharing.
The Home Office explained that, as a way to limit the number of hotels it is using, it will accommodate more people in each hotel by increasing the amount of room-sharing.55 It told us that it had so far increased the number of beds available in hotels by a number “in the high hundreds” through room sharing, and...
Matched on
terms: asylum
Committee recommendation
42match
#3 - Require Home Office to provide quarterly updates on people awaiting relocation and safety penalties.
We are not convinced the Home Office has put in place sufficient measures to safeguard those pending relocation while they wait to hear what will happen 6 Asylum Accommodation and UK-Rwanda partnership to them. The Home Office is not processing asylum claims for more than 50,000 people who have arrived in the UK via small boats and other...
Matched on
terms: asylum
IMB recommendation
39match
Scotland and Northern Ireland short-term holding facilities (STHF) (2025)
Ministers should end unwarranted variation and bring immigration detention facilities up to the minimum standards they require of the police. For example, police custody rules prohibit under-18s from mixing with unrelated adults, yet in facilities such as Edinburgh children may have to pass through rooms with unrelated adults to reach the toilet. How does the Minister propose to...
Matched on
terms: child
IMB recommendation
38match
London short term holding facilities (STHF) (2025)
We would like to see shorter collection waiting times for those seeking asylum and being transferred to asylum accommodation.
Matched on
terms: asylum
Committee recommendation
36match
#13 - Excessive in-donor refugee spend, especially hotel costs, contravenes ODA's development spirit.
Whilst the Committee recognises that in-donor refugee spend is allowable under DAC rules, in a world of rapidly decreasing aid budgets it is not in the spirit of what ODA should be used for, which per the OECD is spending that promotes and specifically targets the economic development and welfare of developing countries. Excessive spend on hotel costs...
Matched on
classifier match
Committee recommendation
32match
#14 - Cap Home Office in-donor refugee costs at a fixed percentage of total ODA.
The Government should consider that Home Office in-donor refugee costs should be capped at a fixed percentage of total ODA spend to protect a rapidly diminishing envelope of funding. This should include formal review points if projections breach 80% of the agreed caps. (Recommendation, Paragraph 47)
Matched on
classifier match
IMB recommendation
30match
Winchester (2020)
We ask the minister to investigate, with the Home Office, why a prisoner who has served his prison sentence appears to be being held indefinitely in HMP/YOI Winchester under IS91? Why are foreign nationals issued with complicated asylum applications written in a language they do not speak (see section 4.4)?
Matched on
terms: asylum
LGO / SPSO decision
30match
24-003-988 - Essex County Council
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about a lack of childcare provision and a lack of replacement care provision in the area. This is because the complaint about childcare provision is made late, and the issue no longer caused the complainant an injustice. There is insufficient evidence of fault with how the Council is managing replacement care...
Matched on
terms: child
LGO / SPSO decision
30match
201202460 - Fife Council
Mr C raised a complaint on behalf of Mr and Mrs A about the council's handling of their housing application. In particular they were dissatisfied that, following the withdrawal of an offer of a property on the advice of the council's occupational therapist, they were not reassessed in relation to their needs. Mr and Mrs A felt that...
Matched on
terms: housing
IMB recommendation
23match
Gatwick IRC (2021)
Training should be strengthened for frontline staff, especially in Tinsley House, to help ensure that potentially under-age individuals are identified and feel able to challenge the age imputed to them (section 4.4.3).
Matched on
classifier match
IMB recommendation
22match
Send (2021)
The Board is concerned about the gaps in the care of vulnerable foreign national prisoners at risk of deportation and about the lack of clarity regarding ownership of responsibility on release (7.5).
Matched on
classifier match
Detention investigation recommendation
22match
Independent Investigation into Concerns about Brook House Immigration Removal Centre - Rec R34
G4S and the SMT should ensure that the welfare staff at Brook House should develop links with charities and other organisations able to support detainees with resettlement overseas. (To be completed within 3 months)
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classifier match
LGO / SPSO decision
22match
201204876 - The Robert Gordon University
Miss C complained that the university refused to terminate her lease under their exceptional circumstances policy, when she applied for this on medical grounds. She appealed against the decision but her appeal was not upheld. Miss C took alternative accommodation but was still liable for lease payments at her university residence. She also complained that student accommodation staff...
Matched on
classifier match
IMB recommendation
18match
Wetherby (2020)
The Board is concerned about the growing number of YP who are being transferred to Wetherby main site from STCs and YOIs, at some considerable distance from their home. Thirty-five such YP arrived in a five-month period. This seems to be contrary to best practice. It is well documented that outcomes for YP are improved when they are...
Matched on
classifier match
Detention investigation recommendation
18match
Review into the Welfare in Detention of Vulnerable Persons - Rec 5
I recommend that the Home Office draw up plans either to close Cedars or to change its use as a matter of urgency.
Matched on
classifier match
LGO / SPSO decision
18match
24-007-850 - Kent County Council
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s decision not to approve the complainant as a host under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. This is because there is insufficient evidence of fault by the Council.
Matched on
classifier match
IMB recommendation
14match
Derwentside IRC (2023)
In the light of the issues and inequalities we have highlighted in this report, to reconsider the suitability of Derwentside as an IRC.
Matched on
classifier match