Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what funding has been made available to each local authority in London and Essex to resettle refugees in each of the next three years.

On 2 October local authorities received a letter to confirm that the first 12 months of a refugee’s resettlement costs (under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme) are fully funded by central government using the overseas aid budget. To ensure that local authorities can plan ahead and continue to respond to the overwhelmingly generous response of the British people, the Government will also provide additional funding to assist with costs incurred in future years. These arrangements will be applied to all cases since the 20,000 expansion was announced.

We do not currently operate any of our other resettlement schemes in London and Essex.