Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has made an estimate of the cost to (a) local authorities, (b) schools and (c) health services of hosting each (i) adult and (ii) child in (1) contingency accommodation and (2) initial accommodation.

Local authorities are key partners in enabling us to procure sufficient accommodation to end the use of hotel contingency.

All local authority areas in England, Scotland and Wales became an asylum dispersal area by default on 13 April 2022. This shift to ‘Full Dispersal’ will increase the number of suitable properties that can be procured for destitute asylum seekers.

The changes to asylum dispersal have been backed by extra government funding. More than £21million in un-ringfenced grant funding has been committed to make sure eligible LAs can provide wraparound support locally.

Our accommodation providers are experienced and have all the required policies and procedures in place around security, safeguarding, critical incident management and health and safety. We have also recently invested in ensuring these checks consider mental and wellbeing aspects of service users, and we are committed to working with all relevant providers to improve and build on the high service standards we expect.