Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many unaccompanied migrant children in the UK have been moved to at least two different local authorities since their arrival.

The Home Office does not currently publish data on unaccompanied migrant children’s movements between local authorities in its quarterly statistics release.

The published data on unaccompanied asylum seeking children can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-april-to-june-2017/how-many-people-do-we-grant-asylum-or-protection-to#unaccompanied-asylum-seeking-children.

There are over 4,000 unaccompanied asylum seeking children (UASC) in local authority care in the UK. The National Transfer Scheme was launched on 1 July 2016 and has been working to ensure a fairer allocation of UASC across the UK. A significant number of local authorities have participated in the scheme and enabled the transfer of children away from local authorities with a disproportionate number of UASC in their care.