Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many households had to move National Asylum Support Service accommodation whilst waiting for their asylum claims to be processed in 2017.

The Home Office does not publish this information centrally and it could only be provided at disproportionate cost by examination of individual records.

The Home Office is committed to providing safe, secure and suitable accommodation for eligible asylum seekers while cases are considered. Such accommodation is usually provided on a ‘no-choice’ basis, however in accordance with our published policy, the Home Office carefully considers all requests from asylum seekers who may have particular vulnerabilities, care needs or health problems that necessitate a need for a specific location or specialist accommodation requirements.

All our Accommodation Providers are contractually required to take account of any particular circumstances and vulnerability of those that they accommodate, including those who have health care issues. This includes making specific allowances for accommodation type in accordance with local authority regulations. Further details regarding this policy can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/asylum-accommodation-requests-policy

The nature of asylum accommodation is such that in some circumstances it may be necessary to move Service Users, if for example the property in which they are residing requires maintenance or emergency repairs which cannot be affected whilst the property is occupied. In such cases we would aim to provide the Service User with at least seven days notice, unless the property required emergency repairs and to leave the Service Users in the accommodation would not be safe.