Home Office urged to 'get a grip' on asylum seeker accommodation amid 'chaos'

The caput of the Home Affairs Committee has urged the authorities to "get a grip" connected the UK's asylum accommodation strategy aft a study recovered the Home Office repeatedly chopped corners successful its "chaotic" effect to pressures.

The authorities has promised to extremity the lodging of asylum seekers successful hotels by 2029 amid mounting unit implicit rising costs and a backlash successful section communities.

But a damning study published by the Home Affairs Committee connected Monday warns a committedness to entreaty to fashionable sentiment without a wide program for alternate accommodation risks "under-delivery and consequently undermining nationalist spot inactive further".

The study says: "The Home Office has undoubtedly been operating successful an highly challenging environment, but its chaotic effect has demonstrated that it has not been up to the challenge.

"The 2026 interruption clause and extremity of the contracts successful 2029 correspond opportunities to gully a enactment nether the existent failed, chaotic and costly strategy and determination to a exemplary that is much effectual and offers worth for money."

Dame Karen Bradley, chairwoman of the Home Affairs Committee, called for the authorities to "get a grip" connected the strategy and larn from its mistakes, oregon it is "doomed to repetition them".

She said: "The Home Office has not proved capable to make a semipermanent strategy for the transportation of asylum accommodation. It has alternatively focused connected short-term, reactive responses."

Expected costs of Home Office accommodation contracts for 2019-2029 person precocious tripled from £4.5bn to £15.3bn, aft a "dramatic increase" successful request pursuing the COVID pandemic and rising numbers of those arriving by tiny vessel among the factors.

The committee's study besides noted the Home Office failed to prosecute with communities and section residents who person "genuine concerns" implicit asylum hotels successful their area, arsenic good arsenic radical travelling from different areas "to beforehand divisive agendas oregon instigate disorder".

MPs person pressed for the Home Office to prioritise closing hotels wherever determination person been "significant assemblage cohesion issues" - including successful Epping, Essex, wherever demonstrations extracurricular the Bell Hotel were held aft migrant Hadush Kebatu was charged and aboriginal jailed for intersexual assault.

The study added: "The deficiency of engagement and transparency has near abstraction for misinformation and mistrust to grow, which successful excessively galore areas has led to tensions and undermined the quality of section partners to beforehand societal cohesion."

It besides says the authorities has mismanaged contracts handed to hotels utilized to location asylum seekers. This includes a deficiency of fines for hotels that person mediocre show and not claiming tens of millions of pounds successful excess profits.

Read more:
Who says what connected asylum hotels
Where tin asylum seekers spell if they can't beryllium housed successful hotels?
A council-by-council breakdown of however galore asylum seekers are successful hotels

The committee has alternatively called for a aboriginal accommodation strategy to beryllium based connected fairness alternatively than outgo alone, to amended connection with section communities and beryllium flexible to conscionable unpredictable demands.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "The authorities is furious astir the fig of amerciable migrants successful this state and successful hotels.

"That is wherefore we volition adjacent each azygous asylum edifice - redeeming the payer billions of pounds.

"We person already taken enactment - closing hotels, slashing asylum costs by astir £1bn and exploring the usage of subject bases and disused properties."