Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has made an assessment of the (a) geographic spread of asylum cases in the legacy backlog and (b) potential effect on local authorities of delivering decisions on all of those cases by the end of 2023.

We are ensuring our cross government partners, such as the (DWP) and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) are sighted on data to enable them to consider the impacts of increased decision making and effectively plan. We are also working with DLUHC to ensure the right asylum decision data is being shared with local authorities to enable effective planning and to lessen the impact on existing homelessness and rough sleeping pressures. Our accommodation providers are directly working with local authorities to notify them when an individual is due to have their asylum support ended.

Data on the geographic spread of asylum seekers in receipt of support (both legacy and flow cases) is published in table Asy_D11 here: Asylum and resettlement datasets - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)