Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many local authorities were contacted in advance of the latest allocation of asylum seekers to initial accommodation.

I wrote to all Local Authorities on 27 March 2020 to inform them that, due to the pause on cessations because of the Covid 19 pandemic, we would be required to procure hotel accommodation, often at short notice in order to meet our statutory duty to accommodate a growing supported population. In addition to this we, and our accommodation providers, engaged with each local authority in which hotels we used.

There are currently 141 Local Authorities participating in the dispersal scheme.

The Home Office has established the Home Office/Local Government Chief Executive group (HOLGCEX) in order to take forward a review of the costs, pressures and social impact of asylum dispersal in the UK, as well as a number of other key priorities relating to how central and local government work together.