Unaccompanied child asylum housing

#101 — Secure more appropriate accommodation with urgency for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

Home Affairs Committee

Recommendation: 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 …

Gov response: 113. The Government agrees that the best place for unaccompanied asylum- seeking children (UASC) is within the care of a local authority. Six of seven hotels were closed on 30 November 2023, with the remaining …

Accepted

#100 — Unaccompanied children in contingency accommodation highly vulnerable to trafficking and going missing.

Home Affairs Committee

Recommendation: 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.

Gov response: 113. The Government agrees that the best place for unaccompanied asylum- seeking children (UASC) is within the care of a local authority. Six of seven hotels were closed on 30 November 2023, with the remaining …

Partially Accepted

#21 — Prioritise closure of unsuitable asylum hotels causing harm and significant pressure on services.

Home Affairs Committee

Recommendation: 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 …

Gov response: The Home Secretary has announced that we will close asylum hotels as soon as possible, and by the end of this Parliament. This is a complex process that must be delivered through a controlled, managed …

Partially Accepted

#20 — Inappropriate asylum hotel use causes significant harm and impacts community cohesion.

Home Affairs Committee

Recommendation: 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 …

Gov response: The Home Secretary has announced that we will close asylum hotels as soon as possible, and by the end of this Parliament. This is a complex process that must be delivered through a controlled, managed …

Not Addressed

#30 —

International Development Committee

Recommendation: 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 …

Gov response: We work with a variety of partners including OCHA to understand the extent of needs and identify critical gaps, and have undertaken an assessment of humanitarian needs and funding gaps across Ethiopia. Due to the …

Not Addressed

#10 — Rising care numbers demand cross-departmental action to address external contributing factors.

Education Committee

Recommendation: 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 …

Gov response: The Government is committed to reducing the number of children entering care by supporting families to stay together safely. This is why we are investing in family help, kinship care and preventative services throughout the …

Not Addressed

#14 — Cap Home Office in-donor refugee costs at a fixed percentage of total ODA.

International Development Committee

Recommendation: 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 …

Gov response: Disagree. The FCDO’s ODA budget is no longer automatically exposed to spending by other government departments, including demand-driven refugee and asylum costs in the UK, so a cap on Home Office in-donor refugee costs is …

Not Accepted

#13 — Excessive in-donor refugee spend, especially hotel costs, contravenes ODA's development spirit.

International Development Committee

Recommendation: 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 …

Gov response: Disagree. The FCDO’s ODA budget is no longer automatically exposed to spending by other government departments, including demand-driven refugee and asylum costs in the UK, so a cap on Home Office in-donor refugee costs is …

Not Accepted

#12 — High in-country refugee costs are disproportionately classified as ODA, diverting funds from global poor.

International Development Committee

Recommendation: 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 …

Gov response: Disagree. The FCDO’s ODA budget is no longer automatically exposed to spending by other government departments, including demand-driven refugee and asylum costs in the UK, so a cap on Home Office in-donor refugee costs is …

Not Accepted

#2 — Set out plans for a flexible, cost-minimising asylum accommodation system, incentivising hotel exits.

Home Affairs Committee

Recommendation: 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 …

Gov response: The Home Office recognises the critical importance of robust contract management in ensuring value for money and operational effectiveness of its accommodation suppliers. To ensure this remains a core function, we have taken a series …

Under Consideration

#1 — Home Office failures led to costly, widespread hotel use in asylum accommodation.

Home Affairs Committee

Recommendation: 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. …

Gov response: The Home Office recognises that hotels became a significant part of the asylum accommodation system due to unprecedented demand and limited contractual flexibility. As part of the Government’s ‘Restoring Order and Control’ programme, the Home …

Accepted

#35 —

Work and Pensions Committee

Recommendation: 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 …

Gov response: The Home Office have the policy lead on No Recourse to Public Funds (‘NRPF’).

Not Addressed

#34 —

Work and Pensions Committee

Recommendation: 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 …

Gov response: The Home Office have the policy lead on No Recourse to Public Funds (‘NRPF’).

Not Addressed

#21 —

Public Accounts Committee

Recommendation: 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 …

Not Addressed

#12 — Home Office has established four large asylum accommodation sites with substantial costs and capacity.

Public Accounts Committee

Recommendation: 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 …

Gov response: 2.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented 2.2 A raft of measures has been implemented to address weaknesses. The programme was recently restructured to deliver smaller sites, requiring lighter touch refurbishment and …

Accepted

#18 — Home Office lacks clear plan and timeline for ending asylum hotel accommodation.

Public Accounts Committee

Recommendation: 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 …

Gov response: 3.1 The government disagrees with the Committee’s recommendation. 3.2 The Home Office has always been clear that the use of hotels as temporary accommodation for asylum seekers was a short-term measure to ensure that the …

Not Accepted

#17 — Home Office pays for thousands of empty hotel rooms as buffer, facing accommodation challenges.

Public Accounts Committee

Recommendation: 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 …

Gov response: 3.1 The government disagrees with the Committee’s recommendation. 3.2 The Home Office has always been clear that the use of hotels as temporary accommodation for asylum seekers was a short-term measure to ensure that the …

Accepted

#3 — Require Home Office to provide quarterly updates on people awaiting relocation and safety penalties.

Public Accounts Committee

Recommendation: 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 …

Gov response: The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. quarterly. Asylum, Accommodation Support Contracts (AASC) provide a mechanism for application of service credits if provider performance does not meet the thresholds within the AASC contract. Accommodation standards …

Accepted

#19 — Home Office fails to provide clarity on financial savings from asylum hotel room-sharing.

Public Accounts Committee

Recommendation: 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 …

Gov response: 3.1 The government disagrees with the Committee’s recommendation. 3.2 The Home Office has always been clear that the use of hotels as temporary accommodation for asylum seekers was a short-term measure to ensure that the …

Not Addressed