Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many (a) adult and (b) children asylum seekers that were accommodated via the Home Office are missing.

The safety and wellbeing of asylum seekers in our care is of paramount importance to the Home Office. We expect high standards from all of our providers, and we have a robust governance framework in place to manage service delivery of the Asylum Accommodation Support Contracts (AASC). Details of the AASC can be found at:

New asylum accommodation contracts awarded - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)(opens in a new tab).

Robust compliance and governance protocols exist to ensure daily engagement is undertaken with our service providers by Home Office officials to ensure and assure that the providers’ operational delivery and overall performance consistently meet the required standards. If any issues are identified providers are required to take immediate action to address and recover accordingly.

We have robust safeguarding procedures in place to ensure all unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in hotels are as safe and supported as possible as we seek urgent placements with a local authority.

Young people are supported by team leaders and support workers who are on site 24 hours a day. Young people are supported by team leaders and support workers who are on site 24 hours a day. Further care is provided in hotels by teams of social workers and nurses.

Local authorities have a statutory duty to protect all children, regardless of where they go missing from. In the concerning occasion when any child goes missing, regardless of their status, they work closely with other local agencies, including the police, to urgently establish their whereabouts and ensure they are safe.

The Home Office does not hold data for the number of adult and children asylum seekers that were accommodated via the Home Office that are missing in a reportable format and it would require a manual search of records which would incur a disproportionate cost. As of 26 January 2023, there are 199 young people missing from Home Office UASC hotels. Please be advised that some of these people are now over 18, but they are included in the figures as they were a child when they went missing. Of the 199 young people that are currently missing, 185 of them were 16 or older at the time they went missing.