Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many undocumented migrants (a) have been removed from the UK, (b) are the subject of legal proceedings seeking their removal, (c) have been granted status in the UK and (d) have an outstanding application for leave to remain since being identified through the right to rent scheme.

The information requested is not routinely collated in the format sought in your question. At the time of the Home Office Science Evaluation of Phase 1 of the scheme, volumes of data were low enough to allow manual analysis of individual cases. Volumes of data are now at a level which makes conducting such an exercise cost prohibitive.

However our records show that between the start of the scheme and 30 September 2016, 31 individuals identified through the Right to Rent scheme have been removed from the UK.

Other cases may be being progressed to removal, or have been made subject to reporting restrictions, or have sought to regularise their stay, or have left the UK voluntarily. The Right to Rent scheme is designed to restrict access to the private rented sector for illegal migrants in order to encourage voluntary departure from the UK and discourage illegal migration. The Home Office will always investigate information it receives about illegal migrants and take appropriate enforcement action according to the information available and the circumstances of the case. It is not always possible to attribute a return or other enforcement activity to the application of a sanction earlier in the case or to the route through which a particular individual was brought to the attention of the Home Office.

As with right to work checks, the Right to Rent scheme is predicated on checks being carried out by third parties (in this case landlords and lettings agents). This means that the majority of illegal migrant prospective tenants will be denied access to the private rented sector as a result of these checks with no intervention by enforcement officers or reference to the Home Office. The sanctions set out in the Immigration Acts 2014 and 2016 in relation to the Right to Rent scheme are there to address circumstances where the scheme is not adhered to by landlords and agents.