Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to provide long term accommodation for asylum seekers housed at the Holiday Inn in Woolston.

The Home Office has always been clear that use of hotels as temporary accommodation for asylum seekers was a short-term measure to ensure that we met our statutory obligation to accommodate asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute during a period of unprecedented numbers of small boat arrivals.

As a result of the range of measures we have implemented to stop the boats, reform the management of asylum accommodation estate and the delivery of alternative forms of accommodation sites, we are now able to stop the procurement of new asylum hotels and begin the first phase of hotel exits. This will involve more than 50 hotels being exited as asylum accommodation by end of January 2024.

As we exit hotels, we will continue to demand that local authorities deliver on their mandated commitments to their regional dispersal plans. Dispersal accommodation is cheaper to the taxpayer and more manageable for communities. We will also continue to deliver the ramp up of the Bibby Stockholm and our large disused military sites as accommodation to ensure we can reduce reliance on hotel accommodation.