Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress she has made on moving asylum seekers out of hotels under Operation Oak; and what steps she is taking to improve the condition of housing for asylum seekers and refugees.

Small Boat crossings across the Channel have been exceptionally high this year as such intake of asylum seekers particularly in Autumn and Winter months has been higher than anticipated and has outstripped the numbers moved into dispersal accommodation. This has led to an increase in the number of hotels in use to enable us to comply with statutory duties to accommodate people seeking asylum who are at risk of destitution.

We continue to work closely with providers to procure additional dispersal accommodation and are exploring options, such as funding for local authorities, to help widen dispersal and to utilise empty homes across various local authorities so we can reduce and ultimately end the use of hotels as contingency accommodation. The more offers from local authorities across the UK we receive, the quicker this process will be.