Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many unaccompanied asylum seeking children Nottinghamshire County Council has accepted under the voluntary national transfer scheme; and if he will make a statement.

Data on the local authorities participating in the National Transfer Scheme (NTS), including the number of transfers in and out of each authority, can be found in the Asylum transparency dataset, last published in November 2018 at; https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/asylum-transparency-data-november-2018.

Since it was launched in July 2016, 790 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children have been transferred via the NTS. This is a significant achievement which has seen many local authorities offer placements for children whose best interests are served by transferring to another local authority. However we recognise that the scheme is not operating as effectively as we would like. We will continue to engage with local authorities across the country to encourage further offers and consider options in how best to share the burden.