Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much her Department has budgeted for the provision of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers per person for the next 12 months.

The United Kingdom has a statutory obligation to provide destitute asylum seekers with accommodation and other support whilst their application for asylum is being considered.

From 13 April 2022, all Local Authority areas in England, Scotland and Wales were expected to participate in a new system of full dispersal accommodation. This will allow the Home Office to move from using hotels to less expensive and more suitable dispersed accommodation. The Full Dispersal model allows the Home Office to procure dispersal properties within the private rental sector in all Local Authority areas across England, Scotland and Wales, rather than the minority of Local Authorities which currently participate, this approach will reduce pressures on those Local Authorities.

Costs for contingency accommodation are subject to change depending on numbers being accommodated within the asylum system. Accommodation costs are considered to be commercially confidential, therefore the Home Office does not publish this information. However, total expenditure on asylum is published in the Home Office Annual Report and Accounts, available at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/ho-annual-reports-and-accounts’.