Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what (a) lessons learned from the current implementation period and b) advice from external bodies was used to draft the provisions of the asylum accommodation contract.

Since the establishment of the project in the autumn of 2016, there has been extensive engagement with strategic stakeholders, including Strategic Migration Partnerships (SMPs), Local Authorities and Statutory Organisations, to feed their views into the design of the next generation of contracts. In addition, the project has undertaken market engagement with private and public sector suppliers to understand what is required to deliver effective solutions for the provision of accommodation and support to asylum seekers.

The Home Office has considered lessons learnt from the existing contracts and Stakeholder feedback had considerable influence on the specifications in the contract, where the Home Office has adopted a host of improvements that were proposed by stakeholders. With these changes we aim to ensure that the new contracts build upon the groundwork for a constructive relationship between central government, local government, the private sector and civil society, to the benefit of communities and those seeking our protection.